Ghost Hunters
by NetRaptor
Summary: Guardian Charon and Phantom are on a quest to recruit more Guardians - by shepherding ghosts around the wilds, protecting them as they search for their Guardians. But this road trip is made dangerous as they are stalked by the Shadows of Yor, who see new Guardians as easy prey.
1. Chapter 1

It was a warm evening in the Last City. Guardian Charon had just arrived back in the Tower after an evening at a dance club frequented by Guardians. She arrived home in a dour frame of mind, and walked out on the wall to clear her head.

Her ghost, Phantom, floated at her left shoulder. He was a little robot in a black racing shell, his blue eye a brilliant light in the twilight.

"What's wrong, Charon?" he ventured, when she had stood at the railing for some time without speaking.

She shrugged.

"Was it the club?" Phantom asked. "I thought you had fun. Everybody was there."

"Everybody still alive," Charon said. "Did you see how empty it was?"

Phantom drooped a little. "Yes. I tried not to notice, honestly."

Charon leaned her elbows on the railing and brushed her black, gleaming hair out of her eyes. "It's not just that my fireteam wasn't there. Or that Valis hasn't come back in months. Although that does make it worse."

"Being alone is no fun," Phantom agreed. He leaned his shell against her cheek. "I'm still here, though."

She smiled and patted him. "I know, Phantom. I'm glad. It's just ... there's so few Guardians left. The Red War finished off so many. The few we have left are out in the Reef. The City will fall without us, and our enemies will take the Traveler."

She looked up to see him gazing steadily at her.

"What do we do?" he asked. "There's still thousands of ghosts out there, looking for their Guardians. I'd probably still be hunting if I hadn't happened across you. More Guardians will come along, if we're patient."

Charon frowned, a line appearing between her eyebrows. She gazed across the city to the Traveler's moon-like shape in the sky. She didn't answer for so long that Phantom thought he'd somehow offended her. "Charon? What's wrong?"

"Ghosts," she whispered. Louder, she said, "Phantom, what if you and I help ghosts find their Guardians? We'll protect them so they can hunt faster, without worrying about the Fallen. We'll help fill the Tower with Guardians again."

Phantom's eye brightened. "You'd do that? I mean, would the Vanguard even let you?"

"Of course they would," Charon said. "I know Zavala worries about our numbers. I think I know just how to ask him. There's been other Guardians who shepherded ghosts around."

"Can we survive in the wilds?" Phantom said. "I mean, you're a Titan, not a Hunter."

"I have friends who can teach me the ropes," Charon said, smiling brightly. "It might be a few weeks before we can start. In the meantime, put out a call for any local ghosts who want an escort to meet up here at the Tower. We'll figure out where to start hunting then."

Phantom projected a thumbs-up icon above himself. "I'll get right on it. Have I ever told you how much I love you?"

She smiled. "Every day, little light."

* * *

Charon received permission from Zavala to go on a quest to find new Guardians. He granted her six months, with the option to extend the time as needed.

She spent weeks in the mountains and woods around the Last City, learning how to hunt, fish, forage, and build fires. Her Hunter friends were delighted to teach her, and mostly they just enjoyed camping and hiking. It was late spring, and Charon planned to spend all summer and fall out in the wilderness.

As her departure date drew closer, Phantom said, "So far, I have three ghosts who would like an escort. There's others who are interested who are too far away to get here in time."

"We can pick up as many as want to come along," Charon said. "I plan to fly from place to place. We're going to hit old cities and graveyards, where the highest chances of Guardian matches might be."

Phantom gazed at her adoringly. "You're so smart."

She stroked his shell. "Watch out. Some of these other ghosts might like me, too. You might have competition."

Phantom's mood went from calm to enraged in a fraction of a second. His eye turned red and he opened his shell to make himself look bigger. "They'd better not! I spent six months in a cage for wanting to bond with you! No ghost had better dare think of stealing you from me!"

"Shh." She gathered in the floating shell segments and pushed him back together. "Calm down, Phantom. You're my ghost forever and ever. Don't freak out." She nestled him under her chin, feeling heat radiating from his core and shell.

Phantom was silent for a long moment. Then he said softly, "I'm sorry. It still ... hurts."

He didn't have to mention how they'd met. Charon's first ghost had been killed in combat. Phantom had happened across Charon and realized he could bond to her spark - but the Vanguard Ghost Oversight Committee thought otherwise and locked him up. Charon had brought in another ghost as a potential bond instead of Phantom. The heartbreak almost killed him.

Charon knew exactly what he was thinking about, and regretted it with her whole heart. She wished she didn't have a part of herself that held back from loving him completely, afraid of further hurt.

"You're the only ghost I want," she assured him. "These other ghosts want Guardians of their own. We're helping them out. You won't be jealous, will you?"

Phantom took his time about answering. "As long as they don't make passes at you ... I think I'll be all right."

* * *

The morning they were to depart, three ghosts met Charon in the Tower cafe, where she was having breakfast.

She'd expected them to be identical, since the Traveler had created all ghosts with the same basic gray shell design - like a star around a core with an eye in it. But these were unique. One ghost was bigger than the others. One wore a dark red shell. And one was pure white.

"Hello!" Charon greeted them. "Here for your escort?"

"Yes," said the dark red one. "I'm Galahad." He nodded to the big one. "This is Beef." He nodded to the white. "This is Peach."

"Thank you for this opportunity," said Beef. Despite his size, his voice was very soft, almost timid. "I think my Guardian is far to the south, but I can't get there by myself."

"I don't want a Guardian," Peach announced, twirling her white shell. "I'm only coming along because it sounds fun."

"She's insane," Galahad muttered.

Peach whacked him with her shell. "I am not! I just think that it's silly that ghosts think we need a Guardian to complete us. Look at me. I'm fine by myself."

"Hey," Charon said. "Be nice."

"I'm very nice," Galahad announced, giving Peach a dirty look. "My Guardian is out there somewhere. I'm pretty sure they're on Earth. But it's a big planet. Lots of dead people to scan."

"Nice to meet you all," Charon said. "I'm Charon, and this is Phantom. I'm going to lay down a few rules before we get started."

The three ghosts shifted in midair, exchanging glances.

"First," Charon said, "you do what I say when I say it. If I say hide, you get out of sight. If I tell you to run for the ship, you do it. No arguments. Understand?"

All three ghosts nodded.

"Second," Charon went on, "it's taboo to touch unbonded ghosts. But if any of you are hurt, or need shelter, or are incapacitated in any way, I'll have to handle you. Do I have your permission?"

Beef said, "Does ... does it hurt to be touched?"

Phantom flew in front of them and landed in Charon's hands. "It doesn't hurt at all," he said. She turned him upside down, twirled his shell segments, then gave him a kiss. She stuck him back in the air over her shoulder. "There. Any questions?"

"Could I have a kiss?" Galahad asked.

"No!" Phantom snapped.

Peach sighed. "You have my permission to handle me, if something goes horribly wrong or whatever."

"Me too," Beef and Galahad agreed.

"Good," Charon said. She lifted a large canvas bag from its spot on the floor and set it on the table. "See if you all fit in there."

The ghosts swooped inside the bag. "Plenty of room!" Galahad announced.

Charon closed the top flap and fastened it. "Can you three still get out?"

One by one, the three ghosts wriggled out from under the flap.

"Yes, but why?" Beef asked.

"Say it's raining and you're in there," Charon said. "And I put the bag down to fight aliens. And aliens flank us, and you need to get away. I don't want you to be trapped."

The three ghosts looked nervous. "I got out just fine," said Peach.

"Me too," the others agreed.

"Good." Charon got up and slung the bag's strap over her shoulder. "Come along, ghosts. We're going to Old Chicago."


	2. Chapter 2: Coffee

Far south of the Last City lay the territory that used to be the United States. Nuclear strikes had destroyed many major cities. Fallen had systematically destroyed outlying towns and communities. Miles of what had been farmland had been reclaimed by the wilderness, becoming scrubby, ugly swamps or scrawny forests.

Old Chicago had escaped nuclear bombs, but conventional bombs had destroyed huge swaths of it. People had briefly rebuilt portions, then moved on as the Fallen became too aggressive.

Charon landed her ship near Edgeston on the west side of Lake Michigan. Buildings still stood, mostly, although trees and bushes had grown through many of them, and roofs had collapsed. The road where she landed was pieces of old, crumbly asphalt with wide spaces of earth in between.

"This looks depressing," Phantom remarked, staying close to Charon's shoulder.

"There's a few more ghosts in this area," Charon said, pulling on a hunter's helmet. "We're going to try to meet up with them. The rest of you, hunt for your Guardians as you like. I'll follow you."

The three ghosts zipped to the nearest building and set about exploring, playing their bright scan beams over the debris inside. Charon sauntered after them, watching her HUD inside the helmet. She had exchanged her heavy Titan armor for lighter Hunter gear - a leather chest piece, heavy canvas pants with steel reinforced knees and shins, and sturdy boots. She had brought a cloak, but left it on the ship. It was a sunny day, and even the gear she wore was soon far too warm.

The ghosts worked in a grid pattern, scanning everything in one block before moving to the next. They discovered several corpses and examined them closely, then moved on.

"I thought you didn't want a Guardian," Charon remarked, watching Peach, who was nearby.

"I'm gathering data for the Vanguard," Peach retorted. She scanned a sagging staircase with a haughty sweep of her beam.

"Liar," Phantom thought to Charon.

It was slow, boring work, but relaxing and sort of interesting, too. Charon hunted through the ruins, herself, calling the ghosts to check out corpses. As the ghosts passed each one by, Charon silently apologized to each corpse. Maybe a different ghost would find them, someday.

The evening of the third day, Charon built up a campfire and was roasting fish she had caught. Preoccupied with cooking the fillets to perfection, she didn't notice the newcomers until Phantom poked her in the back and said, "Hey, new guys."

Two new ghosts flew up and floated at a short distance, looking at the Guardian and the fire. Charon smiled and beckoned. "Come on, don't be shy. I'm helping ghosts find their Guardians. Want to come along?"

"Yes, please," one said. He gave his companion an encouraging nudge, and they flew forward together. One had a generic gray shell, but the other was damaged, half its shell segments missing.

"I'm Oliver," said the gray one. "This is Sentry, and she's hurt."

"Oh, you poor thing," Charon said, setting her fish aside. "Come here. Let me see."

The damaged ghost flew cautiously to her and turned to let her see the broken metal. The shell had been torn away, but it had protected the delicate core.

"I have some spare shells," Charon said. "Would you like me to replace this for you?"

"Yes, please," Sentry said softly. "I can barely fly."

Charon dug into her backpack and pulled out a box of shells. She had brought along a set of camouflage colors - green and brown - to give ghosts an advantage in the wild.

All five ghosts flew up and wistfully examined the new shells. Sentry's pupil shrank to a dot. "I can pick one of these? You're sure?"

"Whichever one you like," Charon said.

Sentry pointed out a forest green one with defensive spikes at the end of each segment. "That one. It'll make me look fierce."

Charon gently unscrewed the old shell. "What happened to you?"

"I was caught in a bad storm back in February," Sentry replied. "A tree fell on me. I was pinned for days and had to leave part of my shell behind."

Charon made soothing sounds. "Poor brave girl! We'll have you fixed up in no time."

In a few more minutes, Sentry was zipping around in her new shell. The other ghosts were delighted. They chased each other around the fire, Phantom included, as Charon ate her dinner.

They all slept on Charon's ship. She stretched out on the floor in a sleeping bag with Phantom snuggled beside her. The other ghosts found various nooks and corners to rest in for the night. But in the morning, Charon awoke to find all five of her little friends sleeping on top of her blankets, cuddled up to her for warmth.

This made Charon extraordinarily happy.

As the days became weeks, she grew attached to her little pack: timid Beef, forthright Galahad, proud Peach, careful Oliver, and nervous Sentry. Phantom took it on himself to tell them the rules. He thought of himself as the boss ghost, since his Guardian was the one looking after the pack. The other ghosts held him in awe, all the more when he told them his story of courting Charon and being locked in a cage.

After a long day of hunting through ruins and wreckage, Charon and her pack gathered around a campfire and talked. They all looked forward to this, as June approached and the daylight lingered later and later.

"What do you think your Guardians will be like?" Charon asked them.

Phantom said, with a sidelong look at her, "I like my Guardians how I like my coffee. Strong and hot."

"You drink coffee?" Charon asked him, as the other ghosts laughed.

"If I did, that's how I'd want it," Phantom replied.

"Well," said Oliver, "I'd like my Guardian to be more like chocolate. Dark and sweet." When the others laughed, his eye blushed pink and he hid behind the pile of firewood.

"How can you compare your Guardian to food?" Beef asked. "My Guardian will be like a bright, burning star."

"That's rich, coming from a ghost named Beef," Peach said acidly.

Beef joined Oliver in hiding behind the firewood.

"Hey," Charon said. "Be nice."

Peach rolled her eye.

"I'll play," Galahad said, spinning his maroon shell. "I'd like my Guardian how I like my coffee: just a wee bit nutty."

The ghosts laughed, and so did Charon. "I've known some nutty Guardians," she said. "You may get your wish."

Sentry said, "I want my Guardian to be like espresso. Powerful."

The group laughed again. Charon motioned to Peach. "How about you?"

"I'm not thirsty," she replied. "Translation. I don't want a Guardian."

"Why not?" Oliver asked, emerging from hiding. "That's why we were made, right?"

"Was it?" Peach said. "I don't remember the Traveler giving me orders. I don't have a prime directive or anything. Ghosts obsess about Guardians. What's wrong with just being a ghost?"

"Um, it's lonely?" Phantom said. "And the wilderness is big and dangerous?"

"You're bonded, Phantom," Peach said. "Your opinion is invalid."

"I haven't been bonded that long," Phantom snapped.

The other ghosts stared at Peach. "How can you not want a Guardian?" Sentry said softly. "Don't you have that sense of your Guardian's spark?"

"No," Peach said, a little too loudly. "I'm fine the way I am."

"Ignore her," Galahad said. "She's been alone for too long and it pushed her over the edge."

Peach protested that she was _not_ crazy and she _liked_ being alone.

Charon said, "Is that why ghosts bond to one particular spark and not others?"

"That's right," said Galahad. "We were made for one particular spark. It's what we're hunting for."

Charon looked at Phantom. "How did you bond with me, then? You're my second ghost."

The ghosts looked at Phantom expectantly.

He drew in his black shell like a tortoise trying to hide. "Well, I ... I don't know. Your spark was broken, but it was just ... right. I knew it as soon as we met. But I'd never seen a broken spark before, and ... your ghost had died ... I didn't know what to do."

"Weird!" Beef exclaimed. "Are there a lot of severed Guardians? I wouldn't mind being a second ghost."

"Not many," Charon assured him. "I was the only one in the Tower, last I checked."

Beef sighed, his big shell drooping a little. "I knew it wouldn't be that easy."

"I think," Phantom said slowly, "that we're made for a certain type of spark. But there may be multiple kinds of that type. If I had found a different Guardian, they would have been a lot like Charon."

"If that's true," said Oliver, "then it improves our odds of finding Guardians."

The other ghosts nodded, encouraged.

Peach floated a little apart, her segments sitting slightly crooked. Had she been human, she would have had her arms folded. "You're all obsessed. Get a hobby, guys."

Charon smiled at her. "What's your hobby, Peach?"

"Gathering data for the Vanguard," Peach said loftily. "I don't need a Guardian to help people."

"What happens when you find your Guardian?" Charon teased. "Pretend you don't see the spark?"

"There's no Guardian for me out there," Peach said. "I've looked for seven hundred years. And you know what? I'm tired of it. So I'm going to do something useful."

"We've all been searching that long," Sentry said softly. "I haven't given up."

"Me, neither," the others chorused.

Peach huffed. "Fine, go on hunting. Me, I'm doing other things with my time."

Sensing the other ghosts getting mad, Charon said, "It's all right, everyone. You all make your own choices. Now, who wants to play Twenty Questions?"

Ghosts loved guessing games and logic puzzles. Charon spent each day trying to think of something that might stump them for more than thirty seconds. The pack cheered up and forgot about their disagreement.

* * *

As they drew closer to the ruins of downtown Chicago with its skeletal skyscrapers, a line of bad weather moved in. Charon and the ghosts found themselves out in thunderstorms and pouring rain. The ghosts kept working, only taking cover when the rain reduced visibility to nothing.

Charon offered them the shelter of her shoulder bag. The five ghosts huddled inside, dripping, as Charon took cover in a building that still had part of a roof. She sat on a chunk of concrete and watched the rain slowly flood the street.

"Hostiles detected," Phantom said suddenly. "Four Fallen dregs headed this way. Looks like they're looking for shelter."

"Auto rifle," Charon barked, leaping to her feet. Phantom transmatted the weapon into her hands.

"Ghosts, stay hidden." She set their bag behind an old counter, still topped by a rusted cash register. Their blue eyes peeked out from under the bag's flap, terrified.

Charon stepped out of view of the doorway, lifted her rifle to her shoulder, and waited. Phantom disappeared.

Before long, the four dregs dashed up on all fours, splashing through the flooded street outside. They burst through the doorway with screeches and hisses, shaking water off their limbs. They were humanoid, with long, wiry limbs and sharp claws. Their faces had four eyes and a set of jaws lined with sharp teeth. Each alien wore armor patched together from scrap metal. These were the lowest caste of Eliksni, and made do with the cast-off supplies of their superiors.

One of them turned and caught sight of Charon.

The alien had a split second to yell in surprise. Then Charon blew its head off. A blue gas spurted from its neck. The other aliens drew knives and guns. There was a short, hot fight as Charon shot one more alien, then fought the other two hand to hand. She stabbed one alien with its own knife, then broke the neck of the other with a fist wreathed in fire.

Silence fell, broken only by the rain outside. Charon stood panting, watching the aliens to make sure they were dead. After a moment she laughed and straightened. "I miss my plate armor."

Phantom appeared and healed several deep knife cuts on her arms. She wiped off the blood, inspected her torn shirt, then returned for the ghost bag. "Everybody all right?" she asked, opening the flap.

The five ghosts looked up at her in awe.

"You killed all the dregs?" Oliver said.

"By herself!" Peach exclaimed.

"Guardians are so strong," Sentry murmured.

Galahad flew up to Charon and bumped his shell into her cheek in an awkward attempt at a ghost kiss. "That was astounding."

Phantom immediately chased Galahad around and around Charon, until Galahad dove back into the bag.

"Nobody kisses my Guardian but me!" Phantom snarled.

The other ghosts laughed.

Charon pulled him away from them, back into place at her left shoulder. "It's all right, silly. He didn't mean any harm."

Phantom muttered something unintelligible.

Charon slung the bag's strap over her shoulder, then examined the dead aliens. "Garbage weapons, as you'd expect," she remarked, snapping a knife blade in half. "But where there's dregs, there'll be the rest of their ranks. Vandals and such. You ghosts be very careful."

"We will," chorused the pack, peeking at the aliens in fearful fascination.

After a while, the rain slackened. Charon scouted the neighborhood for aliens before she let the ghosts resume their hunt.

That night, it rained again, so instead of a campfire, they went aboard Charon's ship. She ate a box of rations and played guessing games with the ghosts.

But as the evening wound down, and the ghosts were seeking out their preferred corners for the night, she found Galahad hovering nearby, in his dark red shell.

"Do you need something?" Charon asked him.

His blue eye roamed the interior of the ship for a moment. "Would it be all right if we entered the city district tomorrow? With the skyscrapers?"

"Sure," Charon said, blinking in surprise. "But why?"

"I have a feeling," Galahad said, shifting in midair.

The other ghosts peeked out of their spots at him, interested.

"You mean ... your Guardian?" Charon said.

Galahad nodded. "I've detected sparks before. But I can feel this one, even though we're still miles away. It's sort of ... calling to me."

Phantom phased into being in a swirl of blue particles. "Does it sing to you?" he asked in excitement. "Like a musical instrument?"

"Yes!" Galahad replied. He glanced around at them all, then flew in a circle. "I've almost found my Guardian. What do you say when you first meet them?"

The other ghosts pelted him with advice. But Galahad turned to Phantom. "You're bonded. How did you introduce yourself to Charon?"

"She knocked me out of the air with a door," Phantom replied.

The pack shrieked with laughter.

Galahad laughed, too. "Let's hope that doesn't happen to me!" He turned to Charon. "What should I say?"

"Well," Charon said slowly, noticing that all the ghosts were hanging on her every word. "You introduce yourself. Find out your Guardian's name, if they remember it. They're usually confused and disoriented. Sometimes they're frightened. You'll want to be very gentle and helpful. They'll probably have lots of questions. Just guide them to me, and I can fly you both to the Last City. It's only a few hours from here."

Galahad nodded and moved his shell back and forth, like the ticking of a clock's hands. "Gentle. Helpful. Yes." He flew in a few circles. "What if they don't like me? What if I've chosen wrong and I get someone like Dregden Yor?"

"He wasn't evil in the beginning," Charon pointed out. "And his actions weren't his ghost's fault. Your job is to support your Guardian. Heal and help them in every way you can. Be their friend. It's what you were made for."

All the ghosts sighed longingly, except Peach, who made a sound like a snort.

Galahad paced around a few more times, then flew to his perch in the cargo railings on the ceiling. Charon crawled into her sleeping bag. Phantom settled on the pillow beside her head.

"I'm glad he'll find his Guardian tomorrow," Phantom told Charon privately, through their Light bond. "No more kissing my Guardian."

"You hardly ever kiss me," Charon thought. "Why get so upset?"

Phantom did, pressing his warm eye-light against her cheek. It felt very much like a kiss.

"Because," he said. "I almost lost you to another ghost. It makes my Light dim even to think of it. I don't mean to be a possessive brat, but ... but Charon ..." His voice dropped, filling with emotion. "I still worry that you'd rather have Simon back."

Simon was the name of her first ghost, who had been killed in combat.

She curled her fingers through the segments of his shell and drew him close. "Phantom, I've told you before. I love you for you. Simon may have chose me, but I chose you."

Phantom made a sound like a glad sob. He flicked off his eye light and pressed his shell against her chin.

Charon held him until she dozed off, trying to alleviate her poor ghost's massive insecurity without quite knowing how.


	3. Chapter 3: Shadows

The next morning, as soon as Charon landed her ship in an abandoned parking lot, Galahad headed for his Guardian's spark.

Charon and the other ghosts followed along, excited and curious. Charon was a little nervous, too. The skyscrapers loomed high above, their walls falling to pieces, leaving only the metal girders beneath, like the flesh peeling off the bones of a corpse. Besides the wrecked cars and decayed street signs and roads, there were Fallen house signs painted everywhere. While birds had sang in the trees and bushes in other areas, the city center was unusually quiet.

She followed Galahad and the other ghosts, watching her helmet HUD and carrying her auto rifle, just in case.

Galahad entered a building and flew up three flights of sagging stairs. The other ghosts flew after him, but Charon climbed the stairs, staying close to the wall and placing each foot carefully. The metal was badly rusted, and some steps creaked and bent ominously under her weight.

"I don't like this place," Phantom muttered in her head.

"Me neither," Charon thought. "It feels like Darkness."

"Now that you mention it," Phantom replied, "the Light levels in this area are awfully low. Galahad might have trouble working a resurrection."

"I'm more worried about what he might attract. Don't resurrections put out a strong pulse of Light?"

"Sometimes." Phantom sounded concerned. "Increasing my scans to max."

Charon reached the top of the stairs at last. She entered what had once been an upscale clothing store, but had been extensively looted. All that remained were empty clothing racks against the west wall, and a headless mannequin standing by itself in the middle of the floor.

Galahad was flying back and forth over a pile of bones under a broken window. His bright beam of Light rebuilt muscle and flesh over the bones, rapidly reassembling an Awoken woman, her skin a pale blue. He built simple clothing around her body, then opened his shell. His shell expanded into a spinning sphere of Light with his tiny core in the middle. He poured his Light into the woman. Her eyes opened, glowing blue.

The other ghosts cheered.

"H-hello," Galahad stuttered, flying down to the woman's eye level. "I'm a ghost. I mean, your ghost. My name is Galahad. Do you remember your name?"

The woman stared at him, confused. Then she looked wildly around the ruined room and spotted Charon. "Who are you? What happened?"

Charon gestured to Galahad. "Answer his question."

The woman looked nervously at the ghost. "Oh. Well, I'm ... I think I was Muriel. Yes, that's it." She rose to her feet, taller than Charon, with fine white hair that framed her face.

"Why are we in this place?" Muriel asked Charon.

Again, Charon deflected the answer. "Ask your ghost. I'm only the escort."

In her head, she added to Phantom, "I'm sensing something dark headed this way."

"I feel it, too," he muttered. "No hostiles on scan, yet, but I think that resurrection may have woke them up."

Galahad was chattering to Muriel about the Traveler, the Light, and Guardians. Muriel kept looking around in amazement, like a kitten that had found its way outdoors for the first time.

Charon peered out the east window, rifle at the ready. Something moved in the building across the road.

Phantom flagged it. "Fallen. Vandals, I think, and - ugh - something worse."

Muriel and Galahard turned at the same time, gazing east.

"What's out there?" Muriel muttered. "I feel it. Evil."

"We need to get to the ship," Charon said. "Ghosts, into my bag for safety." She opened the flap, and the four unattached ghosts dove inside. Galahad remained with his Guardian.

Charon at last approached Muriel. "I'm Charon, and I'm a Guardian, too. Come with me, and be careful. This staircase could collapse at any second."

Charon went down the stairs first, and Muriel followed a flight behind. Charon's HUD was slowly lighting up with more and more hostile signatures. The other buildings were full of aliens that seemed unhappy that a Guardian had been resurrected on their turf.

Charon ran through battle strategies in her head. "Muriel, can you fight?"

"If I have to, I suppose," Muriel called down. "I can't remember a thing. But I'd rather not die again."

The number of Fallen didn't trouble Charon so much as the sense of Darkness. What was causing that? Some kind of crazy Archon? An overpowered Servitor? She studied her map in vain, trying to spot the source.

She reached the ground floor and waited for Muriel. As she did, several dregs burst through the doorway and fired arc bolts at her. Lightning tore through her nervous system, locking her fingers around her rifle. Unable to fire, Charon shoulder-charged the nearest dreg, crushing it into the wall so hard that its chest caved in. Head clearing, she whirled and sprayed bullets into the others. They screeched and dove for cover.

When Muriel reached the ground floor, Charon had Phantom summon a sidearm from her ship's armory. "Here," she said, thrusting it into the new Guardian's hands. "Hold it like this. Trigger is here. Finger goes alongside it, not on it." She jerked her head at Galahad, who phased and disappeared.

Muriel studied the pistol, biting her lower lip. She took it carefully and aimed it downward, as Charon told her, ready to raise and shoot.

More dregs and several vandals burst in, scattering to take cover behind pillars and rotting furniture. Charon covered one side of the room while Muriel took the other. Muriel couldn't hit a thing, but her wild shots made the aliens keep their heads down until Charon finished them off.

As the last alien fell, Charon said, "Let's go. We can't fight forever. We'll head for my ship."

Muriel nodded. Her eyes glowed brightly with excitement and nervousness.

Pausing only to make sure her bag of ghosts was unharmed, Charon led the way outside, checking all sight lines before moving. The aliens were moving in from the east and north, but the west door and street were still clear.

The sense of Darkness remained eastward, too. Charon was glad to put her back to it and run.

The two Guardians bolted down ruined avenues between rotting buildings. Twice they took cover and exchanged fire with the aliens tracking them.

"I've called the ship," Phantom informed Charon. "It'll be here in four minutes."

"Excellent," Charon panted, relaying this news to her companion.

"Do I want to know what these things are that we're fighting?" Muriel panted.

"Ask your ghost," Charon replied. Muriel needed to rely on him for such things, not a fellow Guardian. It was a hard way to teach, in the middle of a firefight, but that was how Guardians learned.

"Someone's coming," Phantom said.

Another Guardian was walking up the street toward them. He wore a poncho that covered his upper body, but his boots were heavy, chitin-encrusted monsters. Charon scanned him up and down, trying to decide if he was human or Hive. The boots were definitely made from some unfortunate Hive alien. The rest of him appeared human, but he wore a helmet with a reflective face plate, concealing his features.

In one fist he carried a hand cannon.

Illogical panic hit Charon in the gut. He must be a Guardian, so, why did the sight of a lone man walking - not running - out of alien-infested ruins set her heart pumping?

"Charon," Phantom whispered, "I don't know why, but that Guardian is surrounded in a Darkness aura."

"Run," Charon hissed to Muriel. "Run!"

The two Guardians leaped from cover and dashed behind another building, just as the Dark Guardian raised his weapon.

Fortunately, at that moment, Charon's ship swept in and hovered overhead, like a great green muscular bird with swept-back wings. Their ghosts transmatted them inside. Charon leaped into the pilot seat as the ship's autopilot lifted them into the sky.

Behind, on the ground, the Dark Guardian watched them go.

* * *

Muriel was warmly received at the Tower. Charon made sure she was taken care of before reporting to Zavala.

The Vanguard Commander divided his time between a tiny office and the Tower railing, where he watched over the City and the Traveler with a brooding eye. A blue-complexioned Awoken, he wore heavy Titan armor than gleamed in the sun. Charon privately thought that he slept in it, too.

"Sir, a report from the United States territory," she said, saluting.

Zavala turned and saluted. His glowing eyes flickered with recognition. "Guardian. Report."

Charon recounted her adventures with escorting ghosts around. She described the sensation of Darkness as Muriel was revived, and of the strange Dark Guardian who had stalked them.

Zavala's only reaction to her story was that his right hand curled into a fist above his sidearm.

When she finished, Zavala gazed at the Traveler for some time. Then he turned to her again. "Do you know of the Shadows of Yor?"

Charon shook her head. "Any relation to Dredgen Yor?"

Zavala nodded. "They are his disciples. Like him, they are Guardians who flirt with the Darkness, seeing how far they can go before they slip over the edge. At least one has been hunted and killed, but the others elude our agents. They disappear. Like shadows."

Charon digested this. Her instinct about a Dark Guardian had been correct. She, Muriel, and the ghost pack had been in extreme danger.

"Sir," she said slowly, "was it chance that we encountered one such shadow? Or do you think my ghost pack drew him?"

Zavala's gaze roamed the four blue eyes peeking over her shoulders. "Perhaps. The Light has many enemies. Forces are in play that would prefer that Guardians dwindle and go extinct. Your actions fly in the face of such aims."

Charon drew herself up, lifting her chin. "Then I'm doing the right thing, bringing in new Guardians."

"Yes," Zavala said with a slight smile. "And if you sense one of these Shadows of Yor, do what you must to protect the ghosts and yourself."

"Yes sir." Charon glanced over her shoulder at her pack of little friends. "Permission to resume my mission, sir."

"Granted."

Zavala watched her go with a paternal smile.

* * *

Charon and Phantom discussed whether or not to return to the Old Chicago area. Neither of them were wild about venturing back into a region haunted by an evil Guardian. Phantom talked to the other ghosts about their destination.

In the end, they settled on Milwaukee. It was another ruined city with many outlying towns. Plenty of opportunities for ghosts to hunt Guardians.

"And there's a couple of ghosts out there, too," Phantom reported. "They're interested in joining the pack, if we can meet up."

Thus Charon landed her ship in a wooded area that had once been a neighborhood. Trees grew straight through the roofs and porches of clusters of houses, their walls half-collapsed and overgrown with moss.

"Once more into the apocalypse," Charon remarked, stepping onto the forest loam.

"Scans detecting no hostiles," Phantom said. "Have at it, guys. If you detect any danger, sing out."

The ghost pack set about quartering the old neighborhood. Charon followed them, exploring, and trying not to peer into the gloom beneath the trees. She sensed no Darkness, but it was easy to imagine she did.

Phantom flew close beside her, his shell often brushing her hair or shoulder.

"Nervous?" she asked him.

The ghost glanced at her, then gazed around them. "A little. More ... worried. About these shadow people. They'd have a lot of reasons to kill innocent ghosts."

"Yes," Charon muttered. "But I'm no shrinking violet, Phan. If one of those goons even looks at my pack, I'll break his neck."

Phantom emoted a smile. "They may not have said much, but the pack is extremely glad to have you. I mean, Galahad already found his Guardian, and it's only been a few weeks. Then you managed an evac, even surrounded by Fallen and an unknown enemy. I heard them talking. They think the Traveler sent you to protect them."

Charon glanced northward, through the trees, in the direction the Traveler lay. "Maybe it did, in a way," she said softly. "I can't discount the Light's influence."

She walked along, keeping track of her pack as they explored and scanned. In turn, she looked for anything edible, or sources of water.

She paused for a while, watching Sentry zip around and through a collapsed house, flicking her scan beam about. An idea flashed through Charon's mind - a silly idea of a new way to amuse the ghosts in the evenings.

She thought about it the rest of the day. That evening, as they returned to the ship, Charon gathered dry branches and broke them into shorter lengths until she had a sizable bundle. Then she hammered them into the ground with a rock, leaving gaps in between.

"It's not firewood," said Beef, watching. "Is it a fence?"

"Nope," Charon said, balancing a stick across two others.

The ghosts watched, curiosity apparent in their darting flight and eager eyes.

"It's a trap!" Oliver exclaimed. "For rabbits!"

"Nope," Charon said. "Not even close."

"Well, it's not a trap for ghosts," Peach said. "There's nothing dangerous about a few sticks."

"Ha, I know what it is," Sentry said triumphantly. "It's a maze."

"Almost!" Charon replied. "It's an obstacle course. For ghost races."

"Ghost races!" the pack exclaimed - and Phantom, too.

Charon marked the starting line, detailed how they had to fly back and forth between the sticks, then around and through the cross bars without knocking them over.

"Think of it as defensive training," she told them. "If an enemy tries to catch you, you need to know how to strafe and wind and spiral."

This pleased the pack immensely. They immediately set about running the course, alone, in pairs, or all together. They took turns timing each other, and spent the rest of the evening racing and arguing about it. Charon cooked dinner over a campfire and watched them, glad she had found a way to keep them thoroughly entertained.

Phantom returned to her long before the others were done. He landed on her shoulder and perched there, the angles of his shell bracing him up.

"Enjoying yourself?" she asked him.

"Very much," he replied. "But it makes me miss you.

"Why?"

"Oh ..." He paused, his blue eye dimming. "I played these sorts of games by myself when I was looking for a Guardian. It just reminds me of how lonely it is to be alone. And unprotected. And ... I'm just glad I'm your ghost."

Charon stroked him. "I'm glad you're my ghost, too." The words seemed an ineffective way to convey the deep affection she held in her heart for him. She'd never been good at expressing her feelings, not even to her previous ghost - there was a wall, there. But Phantom seemed to understand. He sat on her shoulder like a parakeet as she finished her dinner.


	4. Chapter 4: Caution

When it grew too dark to race anymore, the ghost pack returned to the fire. Charon counted them out of habit. Three, four, five. Five?

"Wait a minute," she told them. "We have an extra."

The ghosts all looked at one of their number, who shrank back. They nudged it forward. It blinked nervously at Charon - a ghost in a plain shell that seemed a fraction smaller than the others.

"Hello!" Charon said, smiling. "I'm Guardian Charon. I'm helping ghosts find their Guardians. Want to come along?"

The ghost looked around at the other ghosts, the campfire, and the nearby ship. Then it nodded.

The new ghost never spoke, so Charon dubbed him Little Bit. But he accompanied the pack into the ship for the night, and she found him on her sleeping bag in the morning with the others.

Days passed. The weather grew fine and hot, with thunderstorms every so often. Charon and her pack canvassed miles of ruins. In the evenings they played games, had races, or simply talked.

One evening, when three weeks had gone by and Little Bit still hadn't spoken, Charon asked Phantom, "Is he all right?"

"Sure," Phantom said. "Some ghosts are like that. They never talk to anyone but their Guardians."

She poked him and grinned. "I guess I don't have one of those."

Phantom laughed. "I like talking. To everyone. About everything." He turned to the nearest ghost, which happened to be Sentry. "Seriously, if Little Bit was damaged, he'd say so, right?"

"He's not damaged," Sentry said in her soft voice. "Only very shy. But he has much hope of finding his Guardian, now." She gazed pensively into the night. "I have hope, too."

"Do you think you're close?" Charon asked her.

Sentry took her time about answering. "I don't know. Maybe. It's more ... not being lonely. Feeling safe at night. It's a taste of what having a Guardian will be like. It makes me want one even more."

"Well, if we need to go elsewhere to find yours, let me know," Charon said.

Sentry said nothing, only floated there for so long, Charon began putting away her cooking utensils. As Charon was preparing to call the pack into the ship for the night, Sentry said softly, "I'm glad I have a new shell. I'll look nice when I meet them."

Sentry never gave any more hints than that. Two days later, she found her Guardian.

Charon had just returned to camp, and was building a ring of rocks for a campfire, when Sentry and a male Exo came walking out of the ruins.

"Hey!" Charon exclaimed. "You found him!"

"Yes," Sentry said cheerfully. "This is Grant-4."

"Hello, Grant-4!" Charon said, rising and shaking his cool metal hand. "I'm a Guardian, too."

Grant was fierce-looking, with spikes all over his metal head, and glowing orange eyes. His ghost had dressed him in basic armor, implying he had the disposition of a Titan. But when he spoke, his voice was slow and rich. "Thank you for the kind welcome. I don't understand what's happened. I believe I was dead."

"Yes, most Guardians were," Charon said, conjuring a burst of solar Light to start the fire going. "Hungry?"

"Yes, please."

Grant sat beside the fire and watched in curiosity as Charon called into the ruins, and the other ghosts arrived. All of them greeted him, even Little Bit, who bobbed politely in midair. Every so often, Grant whispered a question to Sentry, who answered in an undertone.

It was pleasant to meet a new Guardian outside of a combat zone. Charon told him a little about herself and her mission as they shared a meal. Then she packed up. "Everybody on the ship. We're headed back to the Last City tonight. I'm sure Grant would rather sleep in a bed than on the ground."

Grant looked down at his mechanical limbs. "I'm not certain it matters."

They piled aboard Charon's ship and arrived at the Tower shortly before midnight. The Guardian administration building was staffed by unsleeping robot frames who greeted Grant and swept him into Vanguard paperwork.

Charon spent the night in her own bed, a blissful change from the hard floor of her ship. When she awoke, the ghost pack was piled all over her, as usual. She held in a sleepy laugh and lay very still, looking at them.

Phantom, of course, lay beside her head on the pillow. Little Bit was snuggled against her leg, while Oliver sat on her stomach. Beef and Peach lay against her other side. All their eyes were off. They resembled a bunch of toys that had mysteriously parked themselves all over her bed in the night.

So much potential. So much stored Light. Each one representing a Guardian who had not yet been found. Who would each of them find? What kind of Guardians would they bring to the Vanguard?

And if Peach found her Guardian, would she change her tune about not wanting one?

Charon turned her head and gazed at Phantom from an inch away. Her ghost. Her own little light, who had endured so much for her before they ever bonded. She stroked him with one finger. He chattered so easily about how he felt, while Charon had no words. She'd never been able to articulate feelings very well. Being a Titan compounded this. Warriors in heavy armor weren't supposed to talk about fear, or insecurity, or even love. Everything was strictly business. Her first ghost, Simon, hadn't been very demonstrative, either. He'd been smoothly professional, exceptional at his job of healing and tracking, and always ready with witty remarks. Their relationship had been easy friendship, partners in battle. He kept his emotions to himself.

Phantom, on the other hand, oozed emotions. Sometimes she felt like he was dragging her through a roller coaster of nonstop ups and downs. And he was so very in love with her. Charon found it sweet and endearing, but at the same time, had no idea how to return his affection - or even if she should. Was it better for a Guardian to keep their ghost at arm's length, in case the ghost was killed? Who in the world could she even ask?

So she watched him in silence, an inch away, yet still distant. She loved him, but behind a wall. Losing Simon had so shattered her, she couldn't face such pain again. Besides, talking about feelings was difficult. Phantom never had to know how she guarded herself from caring too much about him.

His eye flickered on and gazed at her. He emoted a smile. She smiled back.

"Ready to hit the wilds again?" he asked her privately, through their bond.

"Shower first," she thought. "Then a hot breakfast. Then a report to Command."

All business. No troublesome feelings.

Phantom didn't notice her inner turmoil. He flew off the pillow and zipped around the room a few times. Charon sat up, her movement awakening the other ghosts. They floated into the air, spinning their shells, greeting her and Phantom with cheery voices.

A little later, when Charon emerged from the bathroom, clad in fresh Hunter-like gear and drying her hair, she found the ghosts gathered around her framed artwork on the wall.

"She painted this one of me," Phantom was saying proudly, indicating a watercolor of a ghost in space. "She made it before we ever bonded. That's when I knew she loved me."

The other ghosts sighed in appreciation and longing.

Charon ducked back into the bathroom, her face growing hot. Maybe she didn't need to articulate her feelings in words. Phantom seemed to know her better than she knew herself.

* * *

They returned to the Milwaukee area and resumed hunting. Charon spent her days combing ruins in search patterns with the ghosts, picking up odd artifacts, and having Phantom try to salvage old data from rusted out computer equipment. Most equipment was completely ruined from centuries in a damp climate, so he had been unsuccessful. But Charon had found old cooking utensils, half a shovel, several interesting glass bottles, and a dead ghost in a pretty red shell.

"Poor thing," Charon said, cradling it. "Can you read its data?"

Phantom carefully scanned the dusty little core. "Oh. Sad. His Light gave out."

Charon gazed into the dark eye lens, looking for the pupil that would never again ignite. "Does that happen much?"

"Sometimes," Phantom said softly. "It's been a long, long time since the Traveler sent us. It's easy to lose heart and burn out. That's why I think we're doing a good thing, escorting the ghost pack. It encourages them. And it makes all of our Light brighter."

"I wish I'd started sooner." Charon tucked the dead ghost into her shoulder bag. "We'll make sure he gets a proper burial in the ghost crypt back home."

Beef, who happened to be nearby, looked up. "There's a ghost crypt?"

"Yes," Phantom said, cheering up. "It's alongside the hero crypt, in a quiet part of the Last City. Dead ghosts are laid to rest there, with plaques with their names and who their Guardians were. Charon's first ghost ..." Phantom trailed off.

Charon nodded. "His remains are there." Not much was left of Simon after taking a direct hit from an energy bolt. The pieces she had salvaged had been interred with honor. She had taken Phantom there, once. It had sobered him for days afterward.

That evening, when the pack was back together, they took turns scanning the dead ghost.

"There's a message here," Peach said. "Buried in his metadata."

"What's it say?" Charon asked.

The other ghosts gathered around, scanning for themselves. Then they all glanced at each other and shifted their shells uneasily.

"It says," Peach said reluctantly, "'_My Light is failing. It's been too long, too much Darkness, and I'm still alone. If anyone finds me, be warned of the monsters. Unlike the Fallen, these monsters walk upright, like humans. Somewhere about them is bone not of their own, bones that whisper. I've tried to track them, study them, convey warning to the Last City. But in doing so, their Darkness has damaged me. With no Guardian, my Light is not healing as it should. Beware the monsters. Flee them! Or, if you are a Guardian, slay them. I cannot_.'"

A long silence followed these words. Phantom shivered and pressed close to Charon, hiding in her hair.

"Shadows of Yor," Oliver said. "This message is dated ten years ago. They've been around that long?"

"Dredgen Yor did his thing about forty years ago," Charon replied, keeping her voice down and glancing nervously at the trees. "His followers have probably only spread since then. And at least one of them was here."

"What do they do?" Beef whispered, Little Bit hiding behind his oversized shell. "What happens to a Guardian who turns bad?"

Charon rummaged in her memory for stories her Hunter friends had told her. "As best as I can figure out, it's because of those bones they wear. They give them power, but the bones have to be fed Light. By killing people. It's the Sword Logic."

The ghosts gasped.

"Guardians can use the Sword Logic?" Peach exclaimed. "I thought that was only Hive!"

"That's why they wear Hive bone," Charon replied. "The Shadow we saw in Old Chicago had boots made of it."

The ghosts made disgusted sounds.

"Could you kill a Shadow?" Oliver asked.

Charon nodded. "Phantom and I have been playing the Crucible, where Guardians fight each other for training and sport. I can kill a Guardian. The question is whether these Shadows still have ghosts."

The ghosts moved nervously about, thinking about this.

"Can you imagine watching your Guardian turn evil?" Beef said. "Drawn away by the whispers? Heartbreaking."

"It almost makes me not want one," Oliver said.

Peach looked triumphant.

"Almost!" Oliver insisted. "It's a risk I'm going to take."

"Well, I'm never going to have a Guardian," Peach said. "So I don't have to worry about it."

"Don't start that again," Charon said. "Races or guessing games tonight?"

She guided the conversation away from such disturbing topics as dark Guardians. But Phantom didn't participate in the following games. He stayed close to her and looked often into the trees as the shades of evening fell about them.

"Resurrections draw them," he whispered to Charon. "The Light. If they feed on it, must they crave Guardians, as Yor did?"

"Only his gun, Thorn, could completely strip the Light out of a Guardian," Charon murmured. "Thorn was purified. As far as I know, no other weapons can do that."

"But what if they're trying to make them?" Phantom replied. "What if you ... what if we meet a Shadow, and he ... and you ..." He stammered to a halt, unable to voice such a vile thing.

Charon sat very still as a cold dread cascaded through her. Was it possible to be shot with a thorn of black bone that siphoned away her power, her life, until all that remained was an empty husk that no ghost could revive? Was that what the Shadows of Yor did, out in the wilds, far from any witnesses? How many Guardians had gone missing over the years, quietly exterminated?

She hugged Phantom suddenly, shivering. "That had better not happen. I'm not going to feed some sicko more power."

He blinked up at her from her arms. "I'll watch for any sign of Darkness. That's what gives them away." He floated into the air, tilting his segments this way and that, agitated. "I won't let my Guardian be murdered."

Unsettled, Charon took a long time to fall asleep that night. Even after the ghosts had landed on her sleeping bag and settled down, Phantom remained awake, floating near the ceiling of the ship, standing guard. The sight of him reassured her whoever she awoke, which was often, in the overly warm, stuffy ship on that summer's night.


	5. Chapter 5: Double

The next day dawned cloudy and brooding, with a fitful wind that blew in gusts.

"Stormy," Oliver remarked, peeking out the ship's door. "Hey, yesterday I found this place full of dead people. It's all one building. How about we work there? It'll keep us out of the weather."

The ghosts and Charon agreed to this, so Oliver led the way down several overgrown streets and through a ragged forest that had once been a commercial district. Street signs towered overhead, some still bearing mysterious inscriptions such as Burger King.

They arrived at an old warehouse with a vast curved roof. Inside, refugees had set up a camp at one time. But the Fallen had found them - an unhappy story all too common out in the wilds. The floor was littered with old equipment and corpses, both alien and human. Some humans still had Fallen spears embedded in their rib cages.

Outside, it thundered and began to hail, white stones the size of marbles bouncing along the ground.

"Sure glad we're not out in that," Beef said, watching.

Oliver, Beef, Peach, and Little Bit began combing the inside of the warehouse. Charon and Phantom explored, too, looking for any intact equipment they could mine for data. But the Fallen had looted the area, and the only metal left was corroded beyond hope.

"Oh my," Oliver said suddenly.

"Yes," Beef said.

Charon looked up. The ghosts floated side by side, looking at two skeletons that lay on the ground, their bony hands still touching.

"No way," Charon said.

"This will be fascinating," Oliver said as he opened his shell. "Will they remember each other?"

"Only one way to find out," Beef replied, opening his shell, too.

Both ghosts poured resurrection Light into the corpses, rebuilding their bodies from the atoms up. Charon and the other ghosts watched, intrigued. What were the odds of a double resurrection? Yet she eyed the door and grimy windows, streaming with rain. So much Light might attract the Shadows.

The two new Guardians sat up, bewildered. They were a man and a woman, one dressed in Hunter gear, the other in a Warlock robe. The man was a human with medium brown skin, but the woman was Awoken, with blue skin, hot pink hair, and glowing green eyes. Their ghosts introduced themselves. The Guardians looked nervously at them, then at each other.

"I think my name was Nathan," said the man.

"Yes, it was," said the woman. "And I know for a fact that I'm Ariana."

Nathan frowned at her. "Why do I feel like I know you? I mean, apart from you being blue."

"Well, you died holding hands," Oliver said. "So I assume you knew each other then."

"We died?" Ariana exclaimed, jumping to her feet and staring around the ruined, dusty warehouse. "Who killed us? You?" She pointed at Charon. "That woman has a gun!"

"The Fallen got you," Charon replied. "Not me."

Ariana folded her arms. "You say that, but you could be lying." She looked at Beef, who floated nearby, unable to take his eye off her. "Is she lying?"

"She's our friend," Beef replied. "Oh Guardian, you're beautiful."

Ariana self-consciously tucked a strand of pink hair behind one ear. "Well, uh ... thanks, little robot."

"They call me Beef," he replied. "Because I'm so big. But you can call me whatever you want."

Ariana wrinkled her nose. "Definitely changing your name. How about you, Nate?"

Nathan had cupped his hands under Oliver, and they'd been gazing into each other's eyes. "Mine can stay Oliver," he said absently. "What a story he's telling. He says we're called Guardians, and there's space aliens and Travelers and stuff."

"Tell me, too!" Ariana exclaimed, turning to Beef.

Charon stepped behind an upended table so they wouldn't see her laughing. They were such new Guardians, but at the same time, they were already such very good Guardian material.

Peach and Little Bit floated nearby, watching all this in silence. Then, slowly, Peach flew to Charon and hid herself in the ghost bag.

"Only you two left," Charon sighed to Little Bit. "I wonder where your Guardian is?"

Little Bit twirled his shell and didn't reply.

Charon looked down at her bag, where very soft whimpering arose. "I'm sorry, Peach," she whispered. "We'll find your Guardian, too, someday."

"I don't _want_ one!" Peach shouted from inside the bag. "I don't _want_ a stupid, smelly, clumsy ... beautiful, wonderful ... Guardian." Her voice dropped to a low moan.

Charon's own throat tightened a little. "Poor thing," she thought to Phantom.

"I know," Phantom agreed. "She's so deep in denial, she'll never admit the truth." He hesitated, glancing toward the new Guardians. "So, are we taking these two back to the Tower?"

He floated beside Charon, turning to face each point of the compass in turn, jigging his shell segments back and forth nervously.

Charon watched him. "Picking up something?"

"Not yet. Not on scan."

"Do you feel anything?"

Phantom revolved in place. "Mm. No. Maybe. I don't know."

This set Charon's adrenaline to pumping. "What's that mean?"

"I mean we need to go back to the Tower," Phantom said. "And we need to head for the ship now, or we won't make it."

_Won't make it?_ Charon screamed inside her head. Outwardly, she composed herself and checked her rifle magazine. She was the senior Guardian, here. She was responsible to getting these two new Guardians back to the Vanguard. Otherwise, they might become prey.

She hurried toward Nathan and Ariana, who were chatting quietly with their ghosts. "Sorry to interrupt," Charon said, "but we need to get to my ship."

Nathan and Ariana stood up, looking doubtful. Their ghosts studied Charon. By now, they knew her well enough to read her body language - tense posture, rifle in both hands, moving in quick, controlled motions.

"What's wrong?" Beef asked.

"Shadows," Charon said. "Follow me. Stay close. I'll try to protect us."

"Shadows," the ghosts whispered to their Guardians, and explained briefly as they headed out of the warehouse. Little Bit hid in the ghost bag with Peach, now the only two ghosts in the pack. Beef and Oliver disappeared, much to the surprise of their Guardians.

Phantom phased for safety, but continued to keep watch. Charon pulled on her helmet to check her tracking HUD. No hostiles flagged, but Phantom had added a shaded box to indicate possible hostile to the north. Her ship was northwest of their position.

"They're trying to cut us off," Charon whispered.

"I can call the ship when we get close," Phantom replied in her head. "We're about half a mile out of range."

They followed the remains of a road, the rain still falling, but beginning to taper off. Raindrops gleamed on every leaf and grass blade. It was stiflingly muggy, but every so often a breath of cooler air touched them.

Behind her, Nathan and Ariana walked in silence, watching for danger. Suddenly Ariana stumbled. Then she shoved Nathan. "You tried to trip me!"

"Me?" he said, looking entirely too innocent. "It was that stick right there."

"It was your foot!"

"Hush," Charon said. "They'll track us by sound."

Nathan and Ariana fell silent, but glared at each other.

Phantom said privately to Charon, "Yeah, they like each other."

"They're going to get us all killed," Charon thought. She walked quickly, watching her HUD, watching the trees and road.

"Ugh," Phantom said.

It was all he said, but Charon knew what he meant. The sense of Darkness touched her, too - the sensation of dimness at the edges of the vision, of an empty void in every shadow. It was as if the backside of the world had been pared away, leaving only the front sides of the trees and ruins, like the fake scenery in a play.

"I feel funny," Ariana muttered.

"Do you?" Nathan said, poking her shoulder. "Yep, you do."

"Stop it!"

"You stop it!"

"Guys!" Charon snapped.

They subsided and walked on. They neared a bend in the road, the sight lines blocked by trees. Perfect place for an ambush. Charon raised her rifle and slowed, moving cautiously.

Nathan stuck out a foot and tripped Ariana. She stumbled into Charon's back, knocking her forward.

At that instant, something zipped through the air where Charon's head had just been and smacked into the rotted asphalt, sending up a spray of gravel.

Phantom cursed - not with the Light and Darkness phrases ghosts commonly used, but vulgar human swear words.

Charon's stomach lurched. A black spike, like a nail, protruded from the gravel. A hostile flag appeared on her map - a hundred feet away, hidden in the trees.

"Was that a bullet?" Nathan said.

"Run," Charon exclaimed. "Run like your life depends on it."

The three Guardians bolted up the road and around the bend. No more bullets flew, but the hostile marker moved rapidly after them.

It was a terrifying run, trying to keep quiet, listening for gunshots, listening for pursuit. Nothing unusual appeared on the road, but the trees were dense and green, perfect for concealing enemies. Something rustled and cracked back in the trees - something large running after them.

"The ship's on its way," Phantom said.

"Check," Charon replied. "Can we make it?"

"Hostile is keeping his distance," Phantom replied. "Probably planning to shoot as we board."

"Transmat inside, then. Pass the word to the other ghosts."

The new Guardians were panting, holding their sides, when the ship swept in and hovered over the road. Their ghosts teleported them inside in a flash of transmat particles. Instantly they were inside the sun-warmed ship with its familiar smells of fuel and upholstery.

Nathan and Ariana sprawled on the floor, staring around in confusion. "What just happened? Where is this?"

Charon stepped over them and slithered into the pilot seat in one smooth motion. "This is my ship. Hang on to something." She took the controls, switched off the auto pilot, and rocketed away, over the trees.

It was a long time before her heart stopped racing. By that time they had left Milwaukee far behind, and were racing north, toward the Traveler and the Last City.

"I've never heard a ghost curse like that," she thought to Phantom.

"He almost landed a headshot on you," Phantom replied, his voice high with nerves. "Did you see the thing it fired? Not a bullet. Not a rocket. A thorn. A thorn, Charon!"

"The Guardian-killing kind?"

"Yes! It was a shard of bone. It would have drank up your Light. And it only missed because of those two young Guardians horsing around. So, yes. I swore. Because you almost died right in front of me. A final death. My Charon. My Guardian." He sounded near tears.

"Shh," Charon thought. "It's all right. They missed, didn't they?"

"Yes." But Phantom didn't sound reassured. "They're going to keep hunting us. Every time there's a resurrection, they zero in on us. I know we're flying right now, but what if they track us? What if we're sitting at the campfire one night, and there's a gunshot, and ... and your Light goes dark ..." His voice broke on a sob.

"Shh," Charon thought again, concerned and touched. He was so afraid for her. Her little ghost was falling apart. If only she didn't have that wall in her heart that kept her from showing affection.

Phantom appeared in a flash of light and burrowed between her hair and her neck. He simply sat there, his shell cool and hard against her skin, distress radiating from him. Charon couldn't turn her head much, but she didn't mind. He was actually kind of comforting.

Because ... she had almost died. She processed this as she flew. A final death. No resurrection. Prickles of fear ran through her. _You're a Titan. You're not supposed to fear death this way._ But she did. It was enough to make her want to call off the whole ghost pack thing and take an assignment on the outer planets.

But that would mean letting Peach and Little Bit down. It meant fewer Guardians joining the Vanguard. It meant letting herself down, admitting defeat.

"Phantom," she said very softly, "should we stop helping the ghosts?"

Deep in her being, where their life forces were joined, she felt his sudden shame. It burned.

"We've helped them so much," he whispered. "Given them hope. But, oh, it may cost me my Guardian. I can't choose right now, Charon. I'm too distraught. Ask me again later."

Ariana peeked into the cockpit. "Who are you talking to?"

"My ghost," Charon said.

Ariana looked around. "Where is he? Oh." She gazed at the ends of Phantom's shell protruding from Charon's black hair. "Why is it doing that? It's just a robot."

"Ghosts are more than robots," Charon said, trying not to let her annoyance creep into her voice. "I was almost killed. He's upset."

Beef appeared beside Ariana, so close that his shell bumped her shoulder. "You could have been killed, too," he told her. "My poor Guardian, not even alive an hour."

Phantom flew out of hiding and faced them. "We knew that resurrections might draw the Shadows. Boy, did they."

"It was because it was double," Beef said miserably. "I imagine the Light went up like a beacon."

"It's not your fault," Phantom told him. "You had to raise your Guardian."

Phantom sounded normal, but he fiddled his shell back and forth in tight, nervous tics. Only Charon knew how hard he was working to control himself.

Ariana watched this, and Nate squeezed up beside her, too. "They're having a conversation," Ariana told him. "This woman talks to robots like they're people."

"I think ghosts are people," Nate said. "Why else do they have people names and not serial numbers?"

"You'll learn all about it in the Tower," Charon said. "You'll be safe enough there until you're trained up."

"But not you," said Nathan, giving Charon a keen look. "You're going back out to fight the Shadows."

"I'm trying to help ghosts find more Guardians, like you," Charon said. "But I may have to kill a Shadow or two, if this keeps up."

"I think I understand this world, somehow," Nathan said, looking eager. "I almost remember things. It's so familiar. Like that transmat we did. Transmat, see? I knew the word."

"Neither of you have been dead that long," Charon replied. "The stuff in that warehouse was only about thirty years old."

"I told you!" Nathan said to Ariana. She rolled her eyes.

Charon reminded herself to be patient, that these Guardians were brand-new and needed lots of correction. But inside, she seethed with anxiety. It made her irritable.


	6. Chapter 6: Melbourne

They arrived at the Tower that afternoon. Ariana and Nathan went off to fill out paperwork, escorted by their ghosts, and exclaiming about the number of other Guardians and ghosts. Charon ran across Muriel and Grant-4 at opposite ends of the Tower walk, both busy with training tasks and barely able to wave.

Four new Guardians in the Tower. Four ghosts united with their other halves. Charon sat at the Tower railing with a cold drink, gazing at the Last City and the Traveler for a long time. The warm afternoon was cooling toward evening. This far north, autumn was already in the air, a cool edge to the breeze. The trees on the mountains outside the City were turning russet and gold.

"The seasons are changing, Phantom," she remarked.

He floated beside her, admiring the view. Now he turned to her, his blue eye intent. "Yes. We were going to quit for the winter, weren't we?"

Charon nodded, then looked around. Peach and Little Bit were nearby, playing hide and seek in the branches of a juniper in a concrete planter.

"What about them?" Phantom said quietly.

"Nothing says we have to stay in the northern hemisphere," Charon murmured. "Or even on Earth."

Neither of them spoke for a while. The orderly bustle of the Tower seemed safe and friendly after the hostile wilderness and its dangers. Clouds drifted across the face of the Traveler's great cracked sphere. It felt like home. Charon's brain was tired, and it was good to sit there and just be.

"Charon," Phantom said, "let's try the Southern Hemisphere. We'll go far away from these Shadows. If we go another season with no new Guardians, we can try other planets."

"I like that plan," Charon said. "This has turned out more exciting than I expected. I was prepared for the boredom, but not the mind-numbing terror."

"Pack some books this time," Phantom said, cheering up. "Some classics. I'll bet the pack would like to be read aloud to." His voice dropped to a mutter. "I mean, I like it."

"Books don't take batteries, either," Charon agreed. "I'll see what the Archives will part with."

Peach and Little Bit flew up. "Books?" Peach said, spinning her white shell. "You're going to read us books?"

"If you like," Charon said. "What would you like to hear?"

"Adventure!" Peach exclaimed. "Pirates! Battles!"

Charon smiled, once more amused at this spunky little ghost. "I'll see what I can find. Phantom, how about you?"

"Romance," he sighed. "Star-crossed lovers who find each other after misunderstandings drive them apart."

"That's all romance stories, Phan."

He emoted a smile. "I know. That makes it easy."

Peach blinked at him. "Why do you want that depressing slop?"

"I like it," Phantom replied. "Why do you want to hear about battles? That's like every day at work for a Guardian."

"I don't need a Guardian to enjoy a good story!" Peach exclaimed, opening her shell a little to make herself bigger than Phantom. "And I don't need you constantly reminding me! I wish you didn't talk, just like him!" She motioned at Little Bit, who flinched.

"Hey," Charon said, thrusting her palm between Peach and Phantom. "That's enough, you two. Peach, stop being so touchy."

Peach turned her back.

Charon swept Phantom into his place over her shoulder. "Chill, you three. Tomorrow, we're headed south. The precise continent is up to you."

Peach spun back around. "Australia! I've always wanted to see Australia."

"Little Bit, do you want to go?"

The little ghost nodded excitedly.

"Then it's settled," Charon said, pulling out her tablet and opening a map. "Tomorrow, we head for Melbourne."

* * *

It took a while to fly across the globe. Charon took her jump ship to near orbit, crossed the equator, and chased the sun west and south. Even with her ship's swift flight, it still took twenty-two hours. Jump drives couldn't be used so deep in a gravity well.

"Melbourne wasn't destroyed, like so many other places," Phantom told her as she sighted Australia's brown rim at the blue edge of the world. "People slowly abandoned it after the Collapse. Hunter records say that the Fallen haven't prospered so well in Australia. The wildlife kills them."

Charon gave a dry laugh. "That doesn't bode well for us."

"We'll be fine! Just don't touch any snakes, spiders, crocodiles, sharks, jellyfish, bees, venomous plants, or kangaroos." Phantom twirled in place. "I hope we get to see kangaroos."

"In the city ruins? I doubt it."

Peach and Little Bit floated nearby, watching their flight in rising excitement. "I never thought I'd get all the way here," Peach said. "Other ghosts have made the ocean crossing, but I was too afraid to. I've heard so many things about the land down under."

Little Bit looked thoughtful and said nothing.

Charon swept toward Australia's southern end. Lush green lands and the scars of dead cities spread before them as they traversed the continent's east coast.

"I'll find us a place to land," Charon said, "then I've got to get some sleep. You guys stay close, all right? We don't know what conditions are like down here."

"Hot," Phantom replied. "It's their early spring and they're already having a heatwave."

"The weather will turn to tornadoes if we don't watch out," Peach said. "Have you ever seen a tornado? They're so weird."

"I have," Phantom said. "I knew a ghost who was addicted to riding them. He hunted storms up and down North America. I think he'd gone crazy, honestly."

"What happened to him?" Charon asked.

Phantom shrugged his shell. "He tried to ride a big one full of debris. That was the last we ever heard from him."

"Stupid," Peach said loftily. "Why risk yourself doing that when there's plenty of fun, ordinary things you can do?"

"Ghosts get a little bonkers after years alone," Phantom replied. "We're meant to be companions. Being alone messes with your mind."

Peach glared at him.

Phantom backed away. "Sorry! I didn't mean you!"

"You'd better not," Peach growled.

"Stop fighting," Charon said wearily. "We're almost there."

The coast gave way to a great bay scooped out of the land. Around it lay the remains of a city, skyscrapers still struggling to stand amidst the ruins. As with other places, nature had slowly crept in, trees and bushes springing up where roads had been, buildings collapsing as roots and water damage destroyed their foundations. Gutted cars choked the streets, now merely rusted-out skeletons.

Charon landed several miles from the city center, in an open area that might have been farmland. Now it was full of brush and little trees.

"No hostiles on scan," Charon said, climbing out of the cockpit. "Come on, let's look around before I turn in."

The Guardian and three ghosts emerged from the ship and walked around the field, checking out a handful of nearby farm buildings that were now piles of weathered planks. Birds sang all around, and the sun burned down. The air smelled of fresh grass and blooming things.

"I think I like Australia," Charon remarked.

"Me too," Phantom said.

Charon returned to the ship and went to sleep. Phantom stood guard at the ship, but Peach and Little Bit roamed around outside, quartering the farm buildings and exploring.

When Charon awoke at sunset, another ghost had joined the pack.

"This is Mick," Peach said, flying around a ghost in a severely rusted shell. "I invited him to join us. He's not sure, though."

"Um, yes?" Mick said, gazing at Charon uncertainly. "I haven't had any luck in a long time." He tried to spin his segments, but they scraped and grated.

"I have spare shells," Charon said. "You could have a new one, if you like."

Mick blinked at her, then looked at the other ghosts. "Is she serious? She'd do that?"

"My Guardian is very generous," Phantom said proudly. "She's given shells to other ghosts."

"Well ..." Mick turned slowly to Charon. "I'd like that."

Charon took him aboard her ship, where she snapped on the interior light and got out her tools. The ghosts chattered as she worked.

"I've been in Australia for twenty-eight years," Mick said, as Charon wrestled with the rusty screws holding his shell on. "Just following the coastline. The weather this past winter was terrible. I've stayed in Melbourne, where there was shelter."

"Any sign of Fallen?" Peach asked.

"Yes," Mick replied. "There's a lot of them on Melbourne's east side. They have a whole facility where they build skiffs and Servitors. They've been salvaging metal from the city for years. But they don't venture into the outback much."

"Great," Charon muttered. "We'll have to be very careful. Any sense of your Guardian's spark?"

"No," Mick replied. "But I think they're somewhere on this continent. That's why I've been here so long. It's been hard to explore Melbourne with the Fallen lurking about. Maybe I can search properly with a Guardian nearby."

Charon installed a shiny brown shell that turned smoothly when Mick moved. He flew around inside the ship, opening and closing it. "This feels so much better! Thank you, Guardian!"

"You're welcome," Charon laughed. "Feel free to travel with us as long as you like. I've already helped four other ghosts find Guardians."

"Four?" Mick exclaimed. "Really? I like those odds."

Phantom flew in front of him, full of importance. "Here's the rules." He detailed how to follow directions, hide in the bag, and explained agreeing to be handled in emergencies.

Mick nodded. "Reasonable enough. It'll be worth it just to have someone to talk to."

"Good," Charon said. "It's too dark to hunt right now, so, do you guys want me to read you a book?"

The ghosts were delighted at this prospect. After much argument, they settled on an adventure novel called King Solomon's Mines.

Charon read until her voice gave out, near midnight. The ghosts were enraptured.

"I want to go to Africa next," Phantom said. "It sounds amazing."

"I've been to Africa a few times on missions," Charon replied. "It hasn't changed much, really. Still mind-blowingly pretty with huge animals all over. Fewer people, though. At least, that we know of."

The ghosts were fascinated. The next day, as they set out to look for Guardians, they chatted to each other about the book. Charon was happy that she'd pleased them so much. Ghosts liked stories as much as humans did.

They ventured into the city outskirts over the next few days. Charon dealt with several bands of Fallen dregs, which impressed Mick very much.

The weather cooled off and rained, then warmed up again. At night they listened to the dingoes howling. Sometimes they happened across small herds of feral cattle, all with long horns and vicious dispositions. Many of them had taken up residence in park areas in the city, and attacked both humans and Fallen with extreme prejudice. Charon gave them a wide berth after she witnessed the cattle gore a vandal hunting team to death.

"No wonder you said you hadn't had much luck," Charon told Mick one day. She and the ghosts were hidden in a high rise, several stories from the ground, watching a gang of aliens patrolling on the floating motorcycles called pikes. "This is a rough neighborhood."

"Tell me about it," Mick said, peeking over the windowsill, his blue eye contracted to a nervous dot.

"At least there's no Shadows," Phantom remarked cheerfully.

"Don't jinx it," Charon told him.

Mick looked up at her. "What's a Shadow?"

Despite having been in Australia for nearly a month, none of them had mentioned the Shadows of Yor. Charon explained in a hushed voice.

Mick shivered. "I'll be on the alert for any deep patches of Darkness. It's hard to tell with the Fallen about. They carry Darkness with them, too."

"A Shadow feels different," Peach said. "Worse. The first one we met was surrounded by Fallen, but we all felt it separately. Imagine if a Hive ogre was stomping toward you."

"Ugh," Mick said. "I know what Hive feel like. Haven't seen them around much, thank the Traveler."

They stealthily continued their scanning sweeps, locating corpses in buildings and on the streets. They examined graveyards and neighborhoods, skyscrapers and parking garages, harbors and museums.

Then, one day, in the height of Australian summer, Little Bit found his Guardian.

He quietly resurrected her from a shallow grave, where she had been buried with several others. Charon felt the pulse of Light and looked up to see Little Bit, his shell opened into a glowing sphere, raising and clothing a human figure.

"Good for Little Bit!" Charon cheered.

The other ghosts emerged from nearby buildings and flew up to inspect the newcomer. Charon walked up, too.

The new Guardian was a woman with deep brown skin, not very tall, but thick-limbed and strong. Little Bit had dressed her like a Hunter, in a tough shirt, pants, boots, and a cloak.

"Hello," said the woman, looking around in bewilderment. "What's happened?"

Little Bit spoke for the first time. "You're my Guardian." Her voice was soft and feminine. Charon kicked herself for calling the ghost a he all this time.

The woman looked at the ghost and ran her fingers over the contours of her shell. "Well, aren't you just the sweetest thing. I'm Lowanna. Who are you?"

"They call me Little Bit," the ghost replied.

"You're certainly a little bit of a thing," Lowanna said. "Now, what's going on, here? Why's everything so run down?"

Little Bit explained. Mick and Peach watched, Mick enviously, and Peach pretending to scan tufts of grass nearby.

Phantom circled Charon, scanning, already on guard. "Resurrections always draw them. No Shadows yet, Charon, but you never know."

"I doubt we'll see any Shadows out here," Charon muttered. "I'm more concerned about the Fallen attacking us in droves."

"There's a few on my scans," Phantom confirmed. "None headed this direction."

They waited as Little Bit gave Lowanna the orientation speech. Little Bit was a calm, focused orator, her voice pitched for her Guardian's ears only. Charon only heard her because she was close by. Lowanna gazed at Charon curiously, but showed no signs of fear.

When Little Bit finished, she took her place at her Guardian's left shoulder, somehow conveying happiness in every movement. Lowanna approached Charon. "Hello. I assume you've been protecting this Little Bit of mine?"

Charon grinned, warming to the woman at once. "Yes, I have. She's been searching a long time. Come with me, and we'll get you back to the Last City. Can you use a gun?" She passed Lowanna her sidearm.

Lowanna took the weapon and studied it. Then she popped out the magazine, checked the rounds within, and slid it back into place. She carried it correctly in both hands, aimed downward. "Seems I know a thing or two about firearms."

"Good," said Charon in relief. "We may have a fight on the way back." She beckoned to Peach and Mick, who flew up and hid in the ghost bag. Then the Guardians and their attendant ghosts set out for Charon's ship.


	7. Chapter 7: Hunted

They had wandered several miles from the ship that day, and the way back led through an alien-infested part of town. Instead of dragging a new Guardian through that, Charon circled through the city outskirts, where rusted train cars sat on equally rusted tracks, and industrial equipment lay in pieces from the Fallen's salvage attempts.

They were picking their way through a maze of this, when Phantom said, "Ugh."

"No," Charon groaned. "Not now!"

The sense of Darkness touched her soul - the feeling that the visible world was only a thin shell over a gaping void.

"Why are they hunting us across the world like this?" she whispered, pulling on her helmet to check her HUD.

"Who's hunting us, mate?" Lowanna asked. "That evil thing? Feels like a spirit."

"It's a dark Guardian," Charon replied. "And they're behind us. Two of them. Run!"

The two women bolted, leaping train tracks and old pipes, spools of chain and broken truck axles. Charon glimpsed the figures of two cloaked and hooded Shadows racing after them, each carrying a hand cannon.

Lowanna caught Charon's arm and tugged her to the left. "Watch out, watch out-"

A yawning chasm in the ground opened before them - a collapsed subway station. Charon tried to stop, stumbled, and fell into the hole. Lowanna leaped after her.

Charon landed hard on concrete, driving the breath from her lungs. Something cracked in her hip. She started to scream, but kept her mouth shut, strangling the sound.

Phantom appeared in the near-darkness, playing a healing beam over her. "Pelvic fracture," he reported. "I've got it."

Charon breathed the cool, musty air, and peered around in the darkness. The roof had collapsed in the middle, but enough supports remained that the rest of the station was intact. Piles of dirt and leaves covered the floor. An old subway still waited at the platform, its doors open.

Peach wiggled her way out of the ghost bag. "This way!" she cried, flying to the old train.

Lowanna followed her. Charon struggled to her feet and followed, limping, Phantom still healing her.

It was dark and very dusty inside the train. Charon knelt and peered out the door, rifle ready, as the Shadows reached the edge of the hole above. They muttered to each other, arguing about whether to follow. Charon waited, ready to blow them full of holes.

"Uh, Charon," Phantom whispered from phase. "Look behind you."

She glanced around.

Peach flew back and forth over a skeleton on the floor of the train. She halted, then paced, then halted.

"If that's your Guardian," Charon said, "hurry up and raise them. The Shadows know we're here."

"I don't _want_ a Guardian!" Peach cried. "I don't _need_ a Guardian!"

Outside, one of the Shadows jumped down into the station. Charon fired, but he rolled sideways and hid behind an old ticket machine.

"Peach, come on," Phantom said. "It's what you were made for. And we could use a hand, here."

"No!" Peach cried. "I'm happy as a single ghost. A Guardian will_ change_ me and I don't want to_ change_."

"You'll still be you!" Phantom argued. "But with your Guardian, you become more."

The second Shadow jumped down into the station. Lowanna fired once and the man crumpled, holding his thigh and cursing. Unlike Guardians, the other Shadow made no move to help him. He only leaned out of hiding and fired at the train, the handcannon's voice a terrible roar in that echoey place. Black thorn-bullets punched through the train's wall at chest height, narrowly missing the crouching Guardians.

"I don't want to bond to a stupid human!" Peach went on, taking no notice of the fight or flying projectiles. She was completely absorbed in her own internal battle. She flew back and forth, quick and jerky. "Look at how awful some of them are! What if my Guardian is mean? Or an idiot? Or evil? I don't want the hassle of babysitting a creep!"

Charon edged one eye out of hiding to aim her rifle. She fired at the Shadow under cover just as the wounded Shadow fired at her. A black thorn grazed her cheek, opening a red slash. She recoiled with a squeak. But the hiding Shadow fell dead, shot through the forehead.

"Fine, Peach!" Phantom snapped, healing Charon as quickly as he could work his beam. "Leave your Guardian to rot. Forget the melody of the spark. Roam the worlds for the rest of your pointless existence. I'm done arguing with you. My Guardian needs me."

Lowanna landed another hit on the crippled Shadow. He clutched his chest, grimacing in pain, and fired. The black projectile pierced Lowanna's hand. She shrieked and dropped her sidearm.

The dark Guardian uncurled, suddenly smiling. His wounds healed, drawing life away from Lowanna.

Little Bit healed Lowanna. "If he hits you somewhere vital, I may not be able to save you."

Charon steadied her rifle. Her eye above her cut cheek streamed with tears, and she couldn't see clearly enough to aim. She fired at the blur where the gunman was. He suddenly leaped out of the collapsed subway, moving like a Guardian, and disappeared into the outside world.

Silence fell, broken only by the panting of the Guardians.

Peach hung in the air over the pile of bones, staring and staring at it.

Charon turned to Lowanna. "Are you all right?"

Lowanna held out her hand, perfectly healed. "My ghost mended it. But it still hurts. Is it supposed to do that?"

"Not usually," Charon said, touching her cheek. The healed slash still stung and burned. "Their guns fire bone shards that feed on your Light. If the wounds haven't healed right ..."

"Have we been poisoned?" Lowanna asked. Her voice was steady, logical.

Charon nodded. "We might think of it that way."

Where had the Shadow gone? Was he waiting in ambush above, ready to pop them as they emerged? Would the wounds of the Darkness ever heal, or would the Guardians be in pain for centuries? Charon knelt on the floor of the train car, these questions tormenting her.

Nearby, Peach opened her shell, expanding into a sphere of Light. "I'm not doing this because I like you!" she shouted at the bones. "I'm doing it so your stupid spark will shut up!"

Her Light rebuilt the skeleton into a human body and wrapped it in Hunter clothes. An Awoken man sat up, gasping air into his new lungs. All Charon could see of him in the gloom was his glowing green eyes and the dim Light swirling beneath his skin.

"You said you didn't want a human," Charon said dryly.

"Awoken still count as humans," Peach snapped. But her voice wasn't as harsh as it had been a moment before. She stared at her Guardian in wonder.

"Where am I?" said the man, glancing from Charon's helmet and rifle to Lowanna's cloak and sidearm. "Are we in danger?"

"Yes," Charon said, "but not right this second. Peach, bring him up to date."

"I'm your - your ghost," Peach stammered. "I guess I am, now. I'm called Peach. What's your name?"

The man sat there for a long moment, gazing at the little digital eye fixed on him. "Ambrose," he finally said. "You're not a robot. I see the life in you. You call yourself a ghost?"

"It's what we are," Peach said haughtily. "We were created by the Traveler." She launched into the story, telling it badly, halting and backtracking.

Phantom giggled to Charon through their bond, where nobody else could hear. "She never practiced this speech? After all the resurrections she's seen?"

"She'd given up on finding a Guardian," Charon pointed out. "I hope she gets over herself. The poor guy deserves a nice ghost, not her."

"I think she'll mellow out," Phantom replied.

Peach reached the end of her story. "And we're being hunted by Shadows, which is a kind of gunslinger. Do you know what that is?"

"One who slings guns?" Ambrose said with a smile. He climbed to his feet. "Don't worry, Ghost Peach. I think I can handle myself. Have we any weapons?" He turned to Charon and Lowanna.

"Just this." Charon had Phantom transmat a sword from her ship's armory. Charon never used it, but kept it in pristine condition, anyway. It was technically a shortsword, about two feet long, with a razor-sharp edge. She handed it, hilt-first, to Ambrose.

He took it and fingered the edge. "We're facing gunslingers, and you give me a blade."

"It's all I have," Charon snapped.

Ambrose gave her a small smile. "I wasn't complaining, miss."

Lowanna had kept silent this whole time, studying the new Guardian. Now she asked, "Why do his eyes glow like that?"

"He's Awoken," Charon replied. "Created by Light and Darkness in the depths of space."

"Funny that you know that," Ambrose said. "It's the only thing I remember. But how I got here is a mystery."

"One that will have to wait," Charon said, stepping out of the train. "I've got to get you both back to the Tower without the Shadows picking us off." She cautiously approached the body of the dead Shadow. His skin was fair with a coating of sunburn, his blond hair tumbled around the fatal wound in his head. His face looked peaceful, but lined with weariness. Charon had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that death had been a release for this man.

His hand cannon was gone. The other Shadow must have taken it. But he wore a belt studded with Hive bone.

"It can die with him," she said, not touching it.

In his gear, she found a little food, which she left, and ammunition, which she took. In an inner pocket of his cloak, she found a dead ghost.

Lowanna, Ambrose, and the ghosts all gazed at the ghost in silence. Three black thorns had been stuck through its shell and core, as if the Shadow had been trying to assure himself that the ghost was completely dead.

Charon's hands shook as she pulled out the thorns, grinding each one under the heel of her boot. Hot fury burned through her and tears stung her eyes. She tucked the ghost gently into her bag, as if she could alleviate its suffering somehow. "This ghost was too good for you," she told the dead man. "It deserves a decent burial. You don't."

"Harsh," Ambrose remarked. "Should we attempt to cover the body in stones or whatnot?"

"Let the animals eat him," Charon growled. She crouched, then leaped out of the hole with her Light powers, rifle at the ready. She wanted to kill something. Preferably, something shaped like a human with the heart of a monster.

The surface was quiet and deserted, even her HUD showing no movement. The sense of Darkness had vanished, too. The world seemed full and weighty again, the railroad boneyard once more a rusted, messy place.

"Where did that Shadow go?" Phantom wondered. "Surely he didn't give up so easily."

Charon indicated a blood splatter on the rocks with her toe. "He's injured. He'll be looking for Light to consume."

"And we're a walking feast," Phantom replied. "Maybe he's waiting in ambush. Probably between us and the ship."

"Probably." Charon waited as the new Guardians tried to jump out of the hole under their ghosts' instructions. She drew deep breaths and began to calm a little. "The only ghost left is Mick, poor guy."

"We'll find his Guardian, too," Phantom said. "Right now, we have to make sure these two new ones don't die."

Lowanna made the jump and landed on all fours, panting, her brown cheeks flushed deep crimson. "I did it!" she exclaimed, rising to her feet.

Ambrose jumped out a moment later, landed on his knees, and stood up, brushing himself off. Charon had only seen him in near-darkness, and studied him. His skin was ice blue, and a pattern of dots, like freckles, lined the skin around his eyes. His hair was a deep orange, not quite brown, and fell sideways like a handful of wispy feathers.

"More hunters," she thought to Phantom.

"That's good," he replied in her head. "They're more likely to survive a hunt. You're the one I worry about."

"I'm dressed like a hunter."

"Yes, but your instincts are those of a Titan. Protect, protect, protect."

"What's wrong with that?"

"In the City? Nothing. With an untrained fire team? You'll be the one taking bullets. And you're not in heavy armor. And these bullets try to consume you."

Charon looked at Lowanna, hefting her sidearm, and Ambrose, who was tossing his sword from hand to hand. For now, they were her fireteam and responsibility.

"All right, team," she said, pushing back her helmet. "We don't know where that Shadow went, but he's injured. Likely he's preparing an ambush. We're going to head for my ship, but carefully. Use your senses. Listen to your ghost. Without gear, you won't have a screen to show you where enemies are. But your ghost knows and will tell you."

Ambrose hadn't seen Charon without her helmet. His green eyes widened a little. But he composed himself and nodded.

Charon noticed and ignored it. She knew she looked too feminine to be a hunter, let alone a Titan. It made people underestimate her, and she preferred it that way.

The three of them set out across the boneyard, Charon leading, helmet back in place. Their ghosts stayed phased, watching and scanning. Mick hid in Charon's bag, his blue eye peeking out from beneath the flap.

They hurried from cover to cover, first hiding behind boxcars, then pieces of machinery, and finally rocks or trees, as they cut through a narrow band of forest. Charon held their route in her mind. After the trees, they'd come to the remains of a highway, the arches of an interchange collapsed on each other. Beyond that was several decayed neighborhoods, and beyond that was the farm where she'd left her ship. The Shadow might be anywhere along that route. But he was injured, and likely not very far ahead of them. These outlaws liked to hide and stalk their prey like panthers. There'd be no honest fight, only murder from behind.

Of course, this shadow might also still have a ghost, in which case, an injury wouldn't trouble him long. No ghost had appeared to heal him in the firefight, but Charon couldn't write it off completely.

Yet Phantom detected no nearby hostiles, and there was no sense of Darkness.

They reached the collapsed interchange, huge concrete slabs stacked on each other or upended like children's blocks. The three Guardians ducked into the shade of a slab to catch their breath. As they did, the ghosts all said at once, "Ship coming."

"Charon," Phantom said, drawing her name out into a warning. "That's _our_ ship."

Charon's heart turned to a ball of ice - first icy fear, then icy fury.

Flying low over the dilapidated houses in the distance flew her green ship, bird-like wings shadowing the ruins, cruising slowly, the cannon on the nose deployed and ready.

"The shadow hijacked my jumpship!" she exclaimed to her team. "Under cover, quick!"

The three Guardians ducked beneath a leaning chunk of road and crouched in the dimness, listening to the jets approaching.

"The blackgard absconded with your ship?" Ambrose said. "Bad form. But clever."

"How did he get there so fast?" Lowanna muttered. "He was injured."

"All I can think is that he has a ghost," Charon replied. "Or he killed something else and drank the Light. He'd better not hurt my ship." She flexed her fists, missing her steel gauntlets and plate armor. "If only I had my gear ... Phantom, when he passes over, transmat me aboard."

"No!" Phantom exclaimed. "He'll kill you, Charon! You know he's hoping you'll board. Alone. Without your good armor."

Charon seethed, listening as her ship drew closer. Wild thoughts of blasting it out of the sky with her super ran through her head. But if she destroyed her ship, there'd be no chance of stealing it back.

The ship flew overhead and away into the distance. Then it circled, hunting along their route. The three Guardians remained hidden.

"Can the ship track us?" Mick asked, popping out of the ghost bag during a lull.

Charon shrugged. "The life form tracker is ghost-run. By itself, the ship detects obstacles and electronic signals. If he has a ghost, he'll know where we are. But without one, he has to hunt visually. And that's what he's doing, so I assume he has no ghost."

Mick nodded slowly and dove back into the bag.


	8. Chapter 8: Relationships

The ship swept overhead and into the distance again.

Peach phased into being and studied Ambrose. He smiled. "Hello, Ghost Peach. Have something to say?"

"No, I mean, yes," Peach said. "Just because you're the Guardian doesn't mean you get to make all the decisions."

"I agree," Ambrose said, chuckling. "So, Ghost Peach, what do you advise me to do? There is an armed ship out there, hoping to blow me to smithereens. I'm currently hiding with friendlies in a relatively safe spot. Should we attempt to leave?"

Peach studied him a long moment. "I don't like your tone. You're making fun of me."

Ambrose opened both hands. "It was an honest question."

"Well then." Peach looked haughty. "We stay under cover until this jerk leaves. Then we ... then ..." She trailed off and looked at her companions. "We walk home?"

"From Australia?" Charon said. "The Traveler is in North America."

"That is a bit of a walk," said Lowanna. "I say we either get your ship back, or find a different one."

"I can track our ship," Phantom said. "To a point. If he decides to leave Earth, that's the end of that."

"I want my ship," Charon growled.

"Let's assume this slinger of guns does leave Earth," Ambrose said. "We need a secondary plan. Are there other vehicles around? We've seen only uninhabited ruins thus far."

"The Fallen," Charon said. "They're building skiffs on the east side of Melbourne. We could hijack one."

Lowanna and Ambrose brightened.

Charon lifted a finger. "That's only if the Shadow leaves with my ship. It'll be harder to steal a ship from an alien shipyard than it will be to overcome one guy."

"One guy _who eats Light_," Phantom added. "The Fallen at least will kill you honestly, with bullets or arc bolts. I can resurrect you from that."

Ambrose looked at Peach. "If I die, can you bring me back?"

"Yes," she said, tilting herself upward as if sticking her nose in the air. "If I want to. If you die because you're stupid, I might just leave you dead and find someone else."

Phantom, Mick, and Little Bit all stared at her in horror.

Peach glared around at them. "I'm not going to be a butt-kisser like the rest of you."

Ambrose held out a hand. "Come here, Ghost Peach."

She started to fly to him, but caught herself and hovered just out of reach.

"I feel like we started on the wrong foot," Ambrose told her. "I hold the utmost respect for you. But I don't understand your kind, or what relationship we're supposed to have. Please lay aside your presuppositions and cooperate with me."

Peach studied him for a long moment. Then she inched forward until she hovered over his palm. "All right. I can cooperate. But don't try to boss me."

"One of us must be the leader," Ambrose pointed out.

"And that's me," Peach replied.

Ambrose smiled indulgently. "You be the leader, then, Ghost Peach. I shall be your devoted servant."

Peach glanced at the others. "He's making fun of me, isn't he?"

Charon pointed at her. "Peach, if you can't learn to trust your Guardian, you're in for a lot of heartache. You want to boss him, you'd better make damn good decisions."

Peach flinched a little. Then she looked at Ambrose again. "We'll see."

* * *

After an hour of hunting, Charon's stolen ship flew away north and didn't return. The Guardians waited an extra hour in case it was only lurking at higher altitudes. But although they sat and strained their ears, no whisper of a jump ship engine reached them. Their ghosts picked up nothing on scan.

"I think he's gone to orbit, Charon," Phantom said sadly. "I can't even ping the ship's AI, and it knows me."

The afternoon shadows stretched long over the grass. The collapsed overpass was becoming a strange sculpture of right angles and odd diagonals in the setting sun.

"What do we do now?" Lowanna asked. "Do we have any supplies?"

Charon pulled off her light pack and opened it. "I was carrying a couple of ration packs and some fruit I'd found. And I have a water bottle. But that's all. I hadn't expected someone to steal my ship."

Lowanna and Ambrose hadn't eaten since their resurrection. They tore into the food. Charon let them have most of it, remembering the savage hunger that came with having your body repaired and rebuilt.

"Phantom," she thought, "food will be a problem."

"You can hunt," he replied through their bond. "You still have your hunting knife, so you can clean game. There's water around. It's not clean, but I can purge bacteria from your system."

"Good thing we're all Guardians," Charon thought. She sighed and leaned against a pillar, which had once supported part of the overpass. "Looks like we'll be fighting our way through the Fallen to steal a skiff. Can you fly one?"

"Maybe," Phantom replied doubtfully. "I've only ever seen crashed ones. But I'm sure I can figure it out. I mean, I've hacked every kind of tech there is."

Mick flew up, looking mournful. "I wish I had my Guardian, too. Everybody else has one."

"I'm sorry, Mick," Charon said, cupping a hand under the brown-shelled ghost. "This has turned into more adventure than I bargained for. We'll find your Guardian eventually. I promise."

Mick nodded a little, his blue eye emoting sadness. "I feel bad about your ship. I hope nothing happens to it."

"Me too," Charon muttered.

The sun sank. The sky dimmed to a smoky blue, with a penciling of pink clouds.

"At least it's warm," Ambrose said, walking up with his cloak over one arm. "Why are we dressed so heavily in the height of summer?"

"Tradition, I guess," Charon replied. "You won't get cold at night."

"I should say not." Ambrose had wrapped a strip of his cloak around his sword and stuck it through his belt in a makeshift sheath. "Tell me, Guardian Charon. This ghost of mine seems to despise me. Is this a common occurrence?"

"No," Charon said, wincing. "Peach is ... unique. She'll warm up. Probably."

"You give me such hope," Ambrose said dryly. "One appears to be stuck with the ghost, correct?"

"Correct."

Ambrose's glowing green eyes studied the horizon. "The irony of sharing immortality with an abrasive companion. It is immortality, yes?"

"If you die, your ghost resurrects you," Charon said. "You can still be hurt or killed."

"Or starve," Ambrose added with a smile. "Don't think I didn't notice you surrendering your share."

"It's not a problem," Charon replied, ignoring her own growling stomach. "We'll scavenge food from the Fallen as we go. If we move fast tomorrow, we can secure a skiff and head back to the Last City. I can go a day or two without food."

"We could hunt, as well," Ambrose said. He leaned against the pillar beside Charon. "I wish I knew why I died in that railway station. Or why I was here, in Australia, when I so clearly recall being enmeshed in the kugelblitz that gave rise to the Awoken. Perhaps such metamorphosis cannot be forgotten."

Charon gazed at him, wide-eyed. "You're one of the original Awoken?"

"I must be," he replied. "Yet I have no other memories, either before or after that point. Only ... fear. Such fear."

Neither spoke for a few minutes. Crickets chirped in the tall grass all around. An owl hooted, and another answered it further off.

"I've been a Guardian a little more than a century," Charon said. "I don't remember my previous life at all. But I fought at the Battle of Twilight Gap, and the Taken War. And the Red War. We've had a lot of wars. Lost a lot of good people."

Ambrose inclined his head.

"I've been protecting ghosts while they hunt their Guardians," Charon went on. "Peach had given up ever finding one. She claimed she was only coming with me because it sounded fun. But she always got upset whenever anyone else found their Guardian."

Ambrose nodded. "Hm. That might explain her odd behavior. What is your ghost like?"

Charon held out a hand and summoned Phantom. He floated there in his black racing shell, gazing at Ambrose. "Hello. I'm Phantom."

"How do you do?" Ambrose said, nodding. "I suppose you get along with your Guardian."

"Of course I do," Phantom replied. "And Peach will warm up once she sees you in combat. We ghosts admire that so much. We can't fight, you see. We watch and we heal."

Ambrose rubbed his chin. "Ah. Well, I don't know how well I can fight. But this blade suits me." He drew his short sword and went through a series of stances with it, raising it to various guard positions, then feinting at the air.

"I think you'll be fine," Charon said, grinning.

Lowanna emerged from hiding, flanked by Little Bit. Peach appeared, too, and watched Ambrose practice.

"Tell us about these Fallen we'll be meeting," Lowanna said, spreading her cloak on the ground and sitting on it.

Charon did. Night set in as she talked. They all spread their cloaks and lay on them for beds, then talked until sleep overcame them.

The ghosts stood guard, watching for Fallen or wild animals.

Little Bit still refused to speak to anyone but her Guardian. She floated close to Lowanna, loyal and protective. Contentment radiated from her.

Mick and Phantom stayed near Charon, who lay with one hand resting on her rifle's stock. Phantom gazed at her adoringly. "She went hungry so the others could eat. Tomorrow, I'm finding food for her if I have to hunt it, myself."

Charon, who wasn't asleep yet, heard this and hid a smile.

Peach stayed near Ambrose, watching him sleep and not saying anything.

"You're lucky," Mick told her. "Look at how powerful your Guardian's Light is. He'll be a ferocious warrior."

Peach looked up. "He's mine. And he's beautiful." Her voice had softened. "I don't know how to treat a Guardian. I never thought it would be like this. They have personality, and ... and ... Light, I barely know how to talk to him."

"Be kind," Phantom told her. "Don't worry about who bosses who. You're a unit, now. Charon and I boss each other equally. But it works, because we trust each other."

Peach returned her gaze to her Guardian. "I want to do right by him. But I don't want to ... to just stop being me. I feel like I'm being tugged in two different directions. If I ... I don't know ... just give myself up, what will happen? Will I lose my identity?"

With a start, Charon realized she knew exactly what Peach meant. It was the wall in her own heart between herself and Phantom. And she didn't know how to break it.

"I don't know any ghosts who lost themselves to their Guardian," Phantom replied. "What usually happens is both of them become more themselves. The ghost's own strengths are magnified, as they build up their Guardian. It taxes you, you know. You'll have to try to do things you never dreamed of before. I know a ghost who speed-hacked Vex tech to give his Guardian a sparrow in the Infinite Forest. I asked him about it. He said he'd never done it before, but he had to try, because his Guardian needed it."

Peach listened closely. So did Charon, pretending to sleep.

"So," Peach said slowly, "I can still be me, and have my Guardian, too?"

"Of course," Phantom replied. "It's how we're made. He'll be your best friend, if you let him."

Peach gazed at Ambrose a long time without speaking. Then she flew down and landed on the cape beside his head.

Charon dozed off, thinking that if it was possible for Peach to overcome her insecurity, then Charon could, too.

* * *

The three Guardians were up long before dawn, hiking a mile through fields and neighborhoods to a small stream that wound its way down toward the ocean. They filled scavenged bottles with water, trying not to look too closely at the dirt swirling inside.

"Our ghosts will keep us from getting sick," Charon said, eyeing the water doubtfully.

"Good," Lowanna said, "because this looks like a one-way trip to dysentery."

"Delightful," said Ambrose, tasting the water. "I suppose I should be thankful for being a Guardian."

Charon put their water in her pack, since she was the only one with any gear. "All right, here's the plan. We're going to push through Melbourne as quickly as possible. Look for aliens on pikes. If we can grab the pikes, we can travel faster. We'll formulate a better plan once we've had a chance to scope out the shipyard."

Ambrose and Lowanna agreed.

Charon gestured to Mick, who floated nearby in his brown shell. "You know this area better than we do. Will you guide us?"

"Certainly!" he replied, emoting a smile.

They set out, heading east into the city. Mick flew ahead, picking out a winding route through back alleys and side streets littered with debris, but free of roaming animals or aliens.

They encountered no Fallen, on pikes or otherwise, although they did see a few bands in the distance, cutting up metal for salvage. Mick kept away from them.

At mid morning, a ship flew overhead - Charon's familiar green jumpship.

"Guess who's back," Phantom remarked.

The Guardians kept moving, but Charon watched the sky. "He's probably still looking for us. But he'll have to chase on foot. He can't land that ship in these streets."

Phantom pinged the ship's AI. "Looks like ... Fallen frequencies. Why are all these Shadows in league with the Fallen? He's landing at their shipyard. The AI has received friendly communication from Eliksni devices."

"Excellent!" Charon exclaimed. "I'd rather get my ship back than mess with a skiff."

"You call it excellent that a gunslinger is on our trail once more?" Ambrose asked.

"We can handle him," Charon replied, projecting confidence. "I've got to get you two home. No Shadow of Yor is going to stop me."

Ambrose gave her a long look before setting out again.

"Uh, Charon," Phantom said in her head.

"What?" she thought, scrambling over a collapsed fence.

"Did you see Ambrose looking at you just now?"

"No."

"I think he likes you."

"_No_."

"I think he does. He had that look."

"Phantom, we're in a survival situation. I'm not interested in dating right now. Besides, he's a new Guardian. He'll forget all about me in a month."

Phantom giggled and said nothing else. But any time Ambrose looked at Charon, which was often, Phantom laughed. Finally, annoyed, Charon thought, "If I do get a boyfriend, won't you be jealous?"

"I like romance," Phantom replied. "I'd get to see it in action. It's not like ghosts can romance anybody."

Charon was glad for their swift pace down a half-blocked street. It could have been the exercise and warm day turning her face red. She couldn't bear to look at Ambrose for some time. She also carefully didn't think about anything Phantom had said. As a new Guardian, she'd dated several guys in a row. The last breakup had been so messy that the Vanguard Commander, which at that time had been Osiris, had reprimanded her. She'd sworn off anything having to do with romance for the last several decades, and found life much more peaceful.

But Phantom knew none of that, because he hadn't been her ghost at the time. It gave her a feeling of dissonance, as if her life had split with the death of her old ghost and gone in a new direction when Phantom found her.

Messy breakups ... the heart-rending moment Simon had died ... no wonder she was afraid to show real affection to Phantom. Or anyone else.


	9. Chapter 9: Ghost tears

They were halfway across the city, deep in the concrete jungle of ruins, climbing vines, and hanging moss, when a hand cannon roared from one of the roofs overhead. Charon stumbled to all fours, a searing pain in her right shoulder. She rolled sideways, through a broken wall into a building, shouting at her companions to hide. They followed her, peering around for the source of the shot.

As soon as they were under cover, Charon ripped off her cloak and shirt. The thorn burned cold in the wound, burned like dry ice, burned like outer space. "Pull it out!" she hissed to her companions. "Quick!"

Lowanna knelt behind her. "Good thing my fingernails are so long." She gripped the projectile and pulled it out. It was nearly the length of a finger.

Charon sucked in her breath through her teeth as blood ran down her back. Then Phantom appeared, sweeping the wound with a healing beam. The hole sealed up, new skin growing over it. But, like the scratch on her face, it continued to hurt.

"This was close," Lowanna said, crushing the thorn with a brick. "A little lower and it'd have hit something vital."

"It still hurts," Charon muttered.

Lowanna caught her eye and held up her hand, which had been struck and healed the day before. "Mine does, too."

Ambrose crept to the edge of the broken wall and cautiously peered upward at the roofs and broken windows surrounding them. After a moment he withdrew back into hiding. "Our Shadow is following us from the rooftops. We might want to consider disappearing for a while."

Charon stood up, gazing around the inside of the building. Many buildings in this block had lost interior walls to bombs or vandals. Daylight showed through framing and girders. The floor was rough with fallen beams, broken cement, and chunks of plaster, but they could find a way through.

"Follow me," she said, and led them through the labyrinth of ruins.

This new route threw off the Shadow for a while - or at least, there was no sign of him. But it slowed the Guardians down. Finding a route through the buildings was difficult, and once they had to break through a wall or backtrack for twenty minutes.

Charon's shoulder ached - a dull chill that throbbed in time with her pulse. Phantom must have sensed it, because he played his healing beam across it every so often. This made the pain abate for a while, but it always came back. Charon gloomily wondered if arthritis felt like this.

They surprised a gang of Fallen who were gathered around a tangle of wire and metal, building something. They spun around with squawks and hisses, their multiple eyes glowing green, teeth bared. One of them leaped at Ambrose. He drew his sword and sliced off its head in one smooth motion.

The fight was short and vicious. Charon and Lowanna drew their weapons and fired. So did the aliens. In the middle of it, Ambrose spun like a dervish, slashing and stabbing with feline grace.

In ninety seconds, seven aliens were dead, and all three Guardians were wounded. Their ghosts healed them.

"Taking a hit isn't so bad if I get healed afterward," Lowanna said, holding out her arm so Little Bit could mend a bullet hole.

"Same," Ambrose agreed, plucking two bullets out of his leg as the wounds closed. "These chaps had odd weaponry about them. I might help myself." He lifted an arc rifle and examined it. "Not certain how this works, but this looks like a trigger." He thumbed it and blasted a hole in a nearby wall. "Seems I was correct."

"These aliens," Lowanna said. "Fallen, we call them. Why are they here? Did they invade Earth?"

Charon was frisking each alien in a business-like way, relieving them of ammunition and small amounts of food - mostly dried fish. "Something happened to their homeworld. Nobody knows exactly what, but they called it the Whirlwind. They used to have the Traveler, but it left them. They chased it here, and decided to destroy humans and take our world and the Traveler."

Lowanna gazed at the aliens, their sightless eyes and the clothing they wrapped their spider-like bodies in. "They're not so different from us. Why didn't we try to make peace, instead?"

"If anyone tried," Charon replied, "it didn't stick."

Lowanna looked thoughtful and said nothing else.

"They stink," Ambrose observed. "A fascinating mixture of armpit and wet dog."

"I don't think bathing is part of their culture," Charon replied.

She passed out the salvaged fish and devoured her own. A desperate weariness she hadn't noticed suddenly lifted from her. Her rifle didn't feel so heavy, and her shoulder didn't ache as much. She allowed herself a long drink of water and felt almost human again.

The sun was swinging west as they set out, picking their way through the rubble and trying to stay under cover. This was tricky, as it grew steadily darker, and it was hard to find their footing among the endless debris.

More and more Fallen appeared, on patrol, scavenging, moving about the streets. The peculiar stench of alien sewage reached them, far more offensive to the human nose than anything found on Earth.

As night fell, the Guardians climbed into a mostly intact building that still had a few floors. "This is the best we can do for the night," Charon murmured, spreading out her cloak. "Ghosts, stand guard. The Fallen might spot us at any time." She was so tired, she fell asleep almost as soon as she lay down.

Ambrose and Lowanna spread out their cloaks, too. In the gathering twilight, the lights of the Fallen in the streets below seemed violently bright. In the distance was a concentrated glow from what was probably the shipyard.

"No sign of our shadow," Ambrose said quietly.

Lowanna shook her head. "That doesn't mean we've lost him. He may have gone to ground for the night, too." She nodded at Charon. "Look at her. She's run off her feet for us."

Ambrose settled himself on his back, folding his hands on his chest. "She is a good soldier. From what I gather about Guardians, they act with honor and integrity. Charon has certainly exhibited such traits."

"I hope I can, too," Lowanna murmured. "Little Bit, you hanging in there?"

The little ghost appeared over her outstretched hand. "I'm here, Guardian. All's quiet for now. Rest while you can."

Lowanna just held her ghost for a moment, smiling into the blue eye, until the ghost emoted a smile back. "You are just the most darling thing."

"Thank you," Little Bit replied. She floated into the air to keep watch as Lowanna lay down.

Peach flew around the room, investigating the doorways and adjoining halls. After a while, she returned to Ambrose and floated above him. "All clear," she reported. "We should be safe enough for the night."

"You're a good partner, Ghost Peach," Ambrose told her.

She blinked at him. "Well, I ... thanks. And you're a good Guardian. When you whipped out that sword, I couldn't stop watching. How do you fight like that?"

"I'm not sure," Ambrose replied. "My body remembers the way of the blade, even if my head does not."

"Well," Peach said, very quietly, "I'm glad you're my Guardian."

Ambrose smiled.

Phantom watched all this from his spot beside Charon, his black shell camouflaged against her dark cloak. The Guardians and ghosts were bonding - good. He'd worried about Peach, but she was adjusting well.

Mick stayed in the ghost bag. He'd guided them on and off all day, but he steadily became more quiet, less talkative. Nobody had noticed this except Phantom, who still saw himself as the boss ghost. That meant he kept an eye on the others' well-being. And something was wrong with Mick.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Phantom asked him through the Light link all ghosts shared.

"Talk about what?" Mick countered.

"What's wrong with you."

"Nothing's wrong." Mick sounded sulky. "Everyone has a Guardian but me. There's not time to hunt through the ruins, even though we passed a ton of corpses I would have liked to scan. I'm on the verge of leaving."

"You can, if you like," Phantom said slowly. "But don't you want to try escaping with us? Get off Australia?"

"My Guardian's spark is here, somewhere," Mick protested. "I don't want to go away. But I might be better off on my own. The only reason I haven't left is because we're surrounded by Fallen."

"Fair enough." Phantom didn't press him any more. He sensed that Mick wasn't telling him the whole story, but Phantom had learned from experience what happened if a ghost confided in others too readily. Even ghosts sometimes stabbed each other in the back.

Phantom still hadn't forgiven certain ghosts for sending him to the cage in the first place.

Then there was his own Guardian. Phantom floated into the air and gazed down at her. Her Light was so beautiful, veined as it was with the cracks in her soul that he had helped mend. But two dark blemishes marred it - the assault of the Shadow's weapon. Both dark spots looked like splattered ink: a central darkness with spreading rootlets. They had not changed since she had received them, but neither had they healed. He had a feeling that they were held in check only by her Light. Should she die and that Light waver, the darkness would consume her spark.

Charon was vulnerable, he realized. All of them were in danger, but Charon, in particular, was worst off. Lowanna had been struck, but only once. Charon had been wounded twice. Her Light seemed so insubstantial, ready to vanish like frost in the sun.

He would have to protect her. Somehow. Phantom wasn't exactly sure how a ghost could protect a Titan. But his Guardian was injured in a metaphysical way that only he could see. It stood to reason that only he could provide the healing she needed.

"You're the ghost of a Titan," he told himself. "A lovely Titan with courage to match her kindness. And that courage and kindness will kill her unless you can step up and be powerful, too."

Phantom didn't feel powerful. He felt small and lightweight, armed only with scanning and healing beams. Support only, secondary to his Guardian. The only powerful thing he had was his love for her. He sighed at himself. "Phantom, you're a fool. You can't protect your Guardian from a thing."

"No," he replied to himself. "But maybe my love can help her when my instruments can't."

* * *

Charon dreamed that black flowers were growing out of her shoulder and cheek. She was in her apartment in the Tower, looking in the mirror. A black flower, no leaves or stem, was growing on her face. Another had bloomed in the back of her shoulder, rooted in the thorn wounds.

"We feed on your Light," they whispered.

"Get off me!" she snarled, clawing at them. But they were tough as wire, springing up again, unscathed. She tugged at them. Their roots sent pain lancing through her whole body.

"Charon!" Phantom called from somewhere. "I can get rid of them!" But he was in a cage in the corner, and she didn't have the keys.

"Phantom," she said, trying to lift the cage and finding it heavy as lead. "Please help me!"

"I want to," he said, looking at her through the bars. "But you've locked me out. Where's the key?"

Charon woke up, scratching the healed wound on her cheek, Phantom's voice repeating, "Where's the key? Where's the key?"

She sat up, touching her face, then her shoulder. No wiry flowers- only the dull ache of old wounds. It was a little before dawn, the sky turning gray in the east. Lowanna and Ambrose were asleep on their cloaks, their ghosts hovering near them, keeping watch. The air had cooled to a comfortable temperature. Phantom floated beside her, turning to watch her as she awoke. He hadn't actually spoken.

Charon thought, "Any news?"

"All's quiet," he reported.

She almost told him about her dream, but decided against it. He didn't need to know that she had consigned him to another cage, this one in her heart. The black flowers were easy enough to figure out - darkness devouring her Light and such.

"Phan," she thought, "if I die ... will you be able to resurrect me?"

"Of course."

"Even with those thorn wounds?"

He started to reply, then hesitated. He flew around her, playing his beam over her shoulder and face.

"Charon, the darkness is static, but I can't remove it. If you die ... I don't know if I'll be able to save you."

His choice of words sent panic chasing through her. "Save me?"

Phantom nodded. "It's designed to consume your spark. I think it's siphoning your Light into that Shadow. I ... don't know how to fix it." He scanned her again. "I don't know how to - Charon, I can fix anything. I'll figure this out. Just don't die, all right? I'm a strong ghost. I can do this." Yet she heard the doubt in his voice.

"I believe in you," she whispered. She lifted him out of the air and cuddled him. "You're my strong ghost."

He looked up at her for a long moment. "You're my strong Guardian. And yet ... so delicate."

Charon frowned. "Delicate?"

"Yes," Phantom murmured, flying into the air again. "Your heart is so big and soft. Easily hurt. I'll be strong for you. I know I'm only a ghost. I can't fire a gun or swing a sword. But, by the Light in me, I'm going to fight this Darkness for you."

Charon almost laughed, but a lump in her throat choked her. Deep down, she didn't believe that he could help her at all, not against weapons of sorrow. Phantom was a wonderful ghost, but that was all he was - a ghost. Some things were beyond him.

His little blue eye scrutinized her expression. Then he emoted a smile. "Don't worry, Charon. We'll get our ship back today and go home."

Charon looked down, suddenly unable to meet his eye. His words had an awful, secondary implication. "I might be going home ... today."

His eye contracted to a dot. "No! That's not what I meant. I won't let you go to the Traveler ..." His voice broke. "Not without me."

"Phantom." She caressed his shell with her fingertips, drawing him close to her face. "If I die ... for good ... I want you to find another Guardian. Find the one you would have had if you hadn't found me. You're too good to just fling yourself back into the Great Consciousness. The Vanguard needs ghosts like you."

Phantom stared into her eyes. Slowly his diamond-shaped pupil blurred into a line. Liquid Light bled out of his eye lens, trickled down the glass and vanished into the air. He made no sound, only wept Light.

Charon had never seen a ghost cry before, and it was a moment before she realized what was happening. She gathered him into her arms. "Phantom ... don't cry."

He remained silent - painfully, awfully silent for the usually garrulous ghost. Tear after tear of Light dripped from his eye. Charon tried to wipe them away, but her fingers passed through the insubstantial Light.

"What's wrong with your ghost?" Ambrose asked, sitting up and watching, brows drawn together in a frown.

Charon bit her lower lip and tried to think of an answer. Phantom seemed to crouch in her hands, his core angled downward, shedding tears.

Ambrose crawled up and sat beside Charon, looking at the ghost. "Why ... the little fellow's crying."

Lowanna got up and knelt on Charon's other side. She pressed a hand to her mouth and looked at Charon, then the ghost. "Why is he doing that?"

"Because ..." Charon gulped. Her own treacherous tears lurked close to the surface, threatening to overflow. "Because if I die today ... I told him to find a new Guardian. Because ... another Guardian could use a ghost like him."

Peach, Little Bit, and Mick watched this, stunned. Then Peach zipped forward, spinning her white shell aggressively. "You're not going to die, Charon! I've seen you fight. You're too good. This Shadow doesn't stand a chance, and I expect you to snap his neck." She whirled on Phantom. "And you! Stop blubbering! Ghosts have lost Guardians before. It's awful, but it happens, and life goes on. Now stop wasting your Light and keep your Guardian up."

Phantom whisked out of Charon's hands, trailing tears of Light that sparkled in his wake. "She's been hurt by a weapon of sorrow, Peach! If she dies, that's the end!"

Peach came right back at him. "Then don't let her die, you pathetic waste of space!"

Phantom snarled, but before the fight could escalate, Charon plucked him out of the air and held him in both hands. She glanced at the other Guardians. "That's what's wrong. And Lowanna, you'd better not die, either."

"I have no intention of it," Lowanna said crisply. "Now, are we going to sit here and mope? I don't know about you, but a small snack yesterday at noon wasn't nearly enough."

Charon pulled herself together. These new Guardians looked to her as their leader, and she was letting them down. She climbed to her feet and threw her cloak around her. "You're right. It's hard to be brave on an empty stomach, but that's what we've got to do. Come on, let's finish this."


	10. Chapter 10: Gunslinger

The team crept out of hiding and darted through the streets as the sun peeked above the horizon. The Fallen were beginning to stir, but many were still snoring away in their lairs in the ruins. The Guardians slipped past them, making for the shipyard.

The shipyard had once been a spaceport, with terminals, towers, ship docks, and all the vehicles and machinery that went with it. The Fallen had moved in and repurposed it to construct their own ships. The Guardians spotted five different skiffs in the different docks. Each skiff was about forty feet long and shaped like an overweight dragonfly. The front section was the bulbous cockpit and jets, with a long tail section equipped with drop sections for unloading troops quickly. The aliens preferred to sweep into an area, drop half an army, and escape.

There were other ships under construction, cruisers and such, but these were far from complete, most of their framing still visible. One end of the shipyard had been fenced off, but stacks of servitor parts were visible in the corners. Servitors were holy to the Fallen, and the secrets of their construction were not shared with the lower castes of their race.

The Guardians crouched on the roof of a tower, scoping out the area. Charon peered about for her jumpship, but there was no sign of it.

"Can you ping our ship, Phantom?" she thought.

After a moment, he replied, "It's not here, Charon. Best guess is that it's out over the sea to the east of here. Looks like the Shadow spent the night in New Zealand."

Charon bit back a curse. "A skiff it is, then."

Ambrose gestured to the nearest skiff. "My ghost says that is our most likely candidate. According to her scans, that one has been fully fueled and outfitted with supplies. The aliens intend to take it north later today."

"How fitting," Charon replied. "Any guards?"

"Two," Ambrose said.

Phantom pinged them in her HUD-two bored Eliksni dregs who were waiting for fresh guards to relieve them. They likely didn't see much action this deep in their own territory. They lolled against a fuel cart, growling to each other.

"Two's enough to sound the alarm," Charon muttered. "Any of you ghosts know how to fly a skiff?"

The ghosts looked at each other.

"I guess we can learn?" Peach ventured.

"Right," Charon muttered. "Any gunfire will alert the whole place, so I'll do this by hand." She passed the ghost bag to Lowanna. "Everyone, come with me."

They sneaked through a winding passage between spare ship parts, using them as cover to creep as close to the guards as they could. When only twenty feet separated them, Charon broke out of hiding and charged the dregs.

The aliens didn't see her coming until it was too late. The first alien was on the receiving end of a Titan shoulder charge that sent him flying into the skiff's landing gear, where the impact split his skull. The second Dreg fumbled for its rifle and prepared to yell when Charon's fist hit it between the eyes. Its neck snapped.

The altercation seemed loud in the morning stillness, but no other aliens came to investigate. Charon beckoned to her team, then climbed a ladder into the skiff.

Inside was one long, narrow passage that ran the length of the ship. It was dark, and the metal walls were greasy from much traffic. It stank of alien body odor. Charon hurriedly made her way to the forward section, hunting the cockpit. It didn't matter how filthy the skiff was, as long as it got them off the ground.

She reached the cockpit and halted in dismay. The control panel was completely manual controls, and the controls were mostly levers. A forest of levers, dozens and dozens, and none were labeled.

Phantom appeared and scanned the controls, his beam sweeping back and forth. "Oh dear, this will be tricky."

Ambrose and Lowanna arrived, their noses wrinkled in disgust.

"For all their tech," Ambrose said, "haven't these people discovered hygiene?"

"Hygiene is for civilians, not soldiers," Lowanna replied. "Whew, these guys stink."

Both young Guardians saw the skiff controls and gaped at them.

"Well, these alien chaps have four arms," Ambrose pointed out. "Of course they'd design a system like this."

Peach and Little Bit joined Phantom in investigating the controls. Lowanna and Ambrose took up positions back down the corridor, watching the entrance. So far, all was quiet. But the bodies of the guards wouldn't go undiscovered for long.

Charon watched the ghosts fly back and forth, her back beginning to sweat. She resisted the urge to tell them to hurry up. If only her ship had been here-she could have had it off the ground in forty-five seconds.

"All right," Phantom said, returning to Charon. "This is the most counter-intuitive design I've ever seen, but I think we've got it down. Call the others. This will take all of you."

Ambrose and Lowanna returned, looking anxious.

"A guard just found the bodies," Lowanna said quietly.

"Great," muttered Charon. "Time to let our ghosts boss us."

Peach emoted a smile at this.

Under the ghosts' instructions, the three Guardians pulled this and pushed that, opening fuel lines, starting engines, activating stabilizers. The flight instruments were projected into a Fallen's helmet, so Phantom had to jury-rig a quick program to relay the information to Charon's HUD. After a moment, Charon figured out how to read the altimeter and other instruments. Aircraft used the same physical principals no matter what species built them.

Outside, aliens began shouting and rushing about.

"Time to go!" Charon shouted over the skiff's engine noise.

Phantom directed her to a series of levers that worked the hover engines. There were four of these. Each lever increased power at the extreme north and south orientations, but reduced it in the middle. Trying to remember this, Charon activated all four.

The ship sprang into the air with such a lurch that the Guardians were knocked to their knees. Aliens yelled outside. Alarms began to wail. Arc bolts smacked the hull.

Charon grabbed the levers that controlled pitch and yaw. "Hold on!"

"To what?" Ambrose said. The cockpit had no seats or restraints. The Fallen must fly while balancing.

Charon set the ship moving, grazed a radio tower, barely avoided tearing the belly of the skiff out on a hanger roof, and headed for the freedom of the open ocean.

"Fighters deploying," Peach announced. "They're furious. Looks like twenty-eight fighters are after us."

"Adjusting course," Charon said. She swung their nose north, following the coastline. Ahead, the land curved out into the sea, so in a few minutes, they were over a series of rolling hills.

Arc bolts smacked their hull, sounding like gravel and large rocks. "Returning fire!" Lowanna exclaimed, manipulating levers on the other side of the cockpit.

"We're being boarded," Ambrose announced. He charged back down the corridor, drawing his sword. A moment later, they heard rapid thumps and the screeches of aliens.

Charon gritted her teeth and kept flying, trying to manage the unwieldy skiff. She couldn't seem to gain much altitude-the hover jets wouldn't lift them higher than two hundred feet.

"Phantom, how do I climb?"

"Work the pitch!"

She did, but only succeeded in making the skiff fly crooked, its nose in the air.

Ambrose yelled from the back, "Hold her steady!"

Charon leveled the skiff again.

The skiff's arc cannons shrieked under Lowanna's control. A fighter careened past the cockpit, trailing black smoke. It exploded on the ground with a dull boom.

Suddenly Phantom said, "Ugh."

Charon almost missed it in the chaos of battle and her struggle with the controls. Then her head whipped around and she stared at him.

"Our shadowy friend is back," Phantom announced. "And he's brought our jumpship. How nice of him."

Charon's brain spun through the capabilities of her ship. The cannon on the nose fired armor-piercing rounds. She had destroyed several Eliksni skiffs with it over the years. Phantom's tracking showed the jumpship sweeping up behind them, targeting the hover engines. It would cripple them, drive them to the ground. If the crash didn't kill them, the Shadow's weapon would.

A plan sprang to mind-a crazy plan for a human, but an average one for a Guardian. At least, a healthy Guardian.

"Take the controls!" she shouted at Lowanna. "Ambrose, man the guns! I'm going to capture my ship back, or crash it."

Her team gave her shocked looks. Phantom vanished and said in her head, "Charon, no."

She ignored him. "Lowanna, when I give the signal, cut the throttle for a second. That'll give me a chance to leap onto the jumpship. Once I'm away, you two beat it for the Last City. Don't stop, no matter what happens. With luck, I'll be flying right alongside."

They nodded.

Charon ran for the ladder. It extended up into the ceiling, where a trapdoor opened into a roof gantry. Charon heaved it open and stepped into the roaring wind on the skiff's back.

They were flying fast and low, the ground rolling by below. The green jumpship was closing in on their tail. It must have communicated with the Fallen, because their fighters were peeling away, headed back to the space port. The Shadow had no intention of sharing his prey.

Charon looked down the barrel of her own cannon and felt the Darkness. It lurked inside that cannon, inside her ship, in all the places she couldn't see. It hungered for her Light. Suddenly she had the feeling that the scratchy, wiry flowers were blooming from her face and shoulder again.

She shook off the feeling. Not now. She couldn't afford an ounce of fear. She was a Guardian - a Titan. She could do this. "Signal Lowanna."

"Now!" Phantom yelled.

Charon bolted across the skiff's back and down its long tail, straight at the jumpship. As she reached the last few feet, the skiff slowed. The jumpship, unprepared for this maneuver, overshot the tail. Charon only had to jump about five feet to land on her own ship's back.

She landed on all fours, grabbing the base of the wing to avoid being blown off. She felt something strange in the ship's fuselage - the once smooth metal was rough and grainy. She looked down.

Chunks of white bone had been lodged in the ship's skin. Hundreds of nodules protruded from the metal, each one embedded as if with a sledgehammer. Corruption oozed from them - oily, thick Darkness that fed her wounds and whispered to her of death and power.

"Transmat me inside!" she ordered Phantom.

"No!" he replied. "Not with that Shadow - and this bone - "

She got his drift. If the outside of the ship had been so befouled, what had been done to the inside? Crippled as she was, she was vulnerable to this lair the Shadow had made of her ship.

The top hatch hissed open. She whirled to face it, trying to raise her rifle and balance at the same time.

The Shadow scrambled up into the wind, his cloak billowing around him. He wore a Hunter's mask and goggles, entirely concealing his face. He looked inhuman, Other.

Gunslinger.

Instinct kicked in. Charon threw herself into a sideways tumble across the ship's back. The Shadow drew his hand cannon with a motion faster than the eye could follow and blasted two holes in the ship in her wake. She kept moving until she slid down the ship's side and landed on the wing. She had a little cover, but not for long. The ship's engine roared beneath her, the vibration transmitting through her legs.

"He's coming!" Phantom shouted in her head.

Charon aimed her rifle in the direction of her enemy, minimizing the movements she would have to make while exposed. Then she stood erect and fired across her ship.

The Shadow leaped sideways, slid across the cockpit's glass, and vanished from sight.

"Did he fall off?" Charon asked, climbing onto the ship's back.

"He's on the nose, somehow," Phantom replied. "Watch out-"

An energy grenade sailed over the cockpit, straight at Charon. She called on her Light and summoned a shield across one arm. She bounced the grenade off this shield. It careened away over the side and exploded on the ground below.

Charon's focus had been on the grenade. The Shadow sprang up over the cockpit, firing as he came. Charon dove for the cover of the wing, but a black thorn tore a furrow in her side. Hot blood seeped through her clothes. Another black flower took root.

"He's coming this way!" Phantom cried as Charon knelt, holding her side. "He's going to kill you!"

"Not today," Charon panted through her teeth. She called on her Light again and created a grenade, which she lobbed at the Shadow.

He saw it coming and shot it out of the air. The grenade detonated in a flash of fire that nearly blew both combatants off the ship. The ship bucked and jolted as the AI struggled to stabilize it. Charon slid down the roughened fuselage and landed on the port wing. The Shadow dropped to a crouch, then began to crawl toward Charon's position, hand cannon at the ready.

Charon's strength began to drain away. Her rifle grew heavy in her arms. The grenade had hurt the Shadow, so he was drawing Light out of her. The wind of their flight beat at her like blunt fists, and she had trouble balancing.

"Charon, you've got to bail out," Phantom said. "He's going to kill you by attrition."

Her temper flared. Abandon her poor, corrupted ship to this thief and murderer? Admit defeat and run away? She was a Titan. Sure, she had been injured and was bleeding away Light. But if she was going down, she was taking her enemy with her.

"Hold on, Phantom," she said, calling on the Light again. Lightning erupted from her fists and crawled up her arms.

"You're not going to -"

She leaped straight up and came straight down, driving her empowered fists straight through the ship's wing. The wing crumpled. Then the thrust from the engine did the rest and sheared the wing off entirely.

Charon jumped, but not soon enough. The engine flipped the wing upward, catapulting her into the sky. She spun in midair, trying to balance and save herself, even though it was impossible.

_I'm going to die_, she thought. She'd died in combat before. Resurrection hadn't been a problem. But now she was tainted, and this death might be her last.

"No, you're not!" Phantom cried inside her head. "I won't let you!"


	11. Chapter 11: Walls

The horizon rose as Charon plunged downward. She curled up, arms wrapped around her head. "Sorry, Phantom." And she was sorry. Sorry that their time together had been so short. Sorry that Mick had never found his Guardian. Sorry that so much was left undone, and her Light was about to go out.

"I'm not losing you like this!" Phantom's voice rose to a scream. His spark burst into flame. Light washed through her as he restarted her Super.

A Titan's protective energy shield flared to life in a bubble around her. She hit the ground inside the shield, which absorbed the shock, and bounced.

Not far away, the jumpship hit the ground at the same time.

Charon and the ship bounced, tumbled, rolled, until she thought that the crazy metallic crashing was somehow coming from her. The shield caught her over and over. Each time her body collided with it, strange images flashed through her mind.

Phantom was holding her. He was pure Light, his essence grown beyond his ghost shape, overexerting himself, desperate. Behind him loomed the Traveler, watchful, witnessing this in silence.

She bounced again, the breath driven from her lungs. Phantom was crying out to the Traveler. She couldn't quite understand his words-

Another impact. She caught a snatch of Phantom's voice. "Let me take it all - I can bear it -"

The Traveler replied. Its voice resonated in her bones, shocking her very soul. It was awake and aware, more aware than any human, aware of the motion of atoms, the shifting of photons, and the great, slow surges of gravity throughout the universe. And it was sad. She felt it for a nanosecond. The Traveler bore deep grief for what it was witnessing.

Another impact. Phantom was there, close as her own heartbeat, attacking the black flowers, uprooting them, supplanting them. But it was wrong, somehow. He was killing himself.

A final impact. The shield vanished. Charon rolled to a halt and lay on her back, panting, staring up at the blue sky. She wasn't dead. She wasn't even hurt - the wound in her side was healed. Everything seemed strangely quiet and peaceful.

She scrambled to her feet. "Phantom!"

No answer.

She held out a hand and tried to summon him. "Phantom, come here!"

It wasn't exactly an answer, but she felt him. He was nearby - phased and invisible. It almost felt like he was inside her, somehow, tangled in those awful black flowers.

Her ship had come to rest a hundred feet away, crumpled and shattered. Darkness bled from it. She had no desire to go near it, even to see if the Shadow was dead. She knew he wasn't. The assurance lay in her own black wounds, siphoning her life away, healing the Shadow.

But it wasn't her life being siphoned. It was Phantom's. He was entwined with her, their Light overlapping. It felt wrong and deadly, like she'd been wrapped in smothering plastic.

She sank to the ground and wrapped her arms around her knees. She had to concentrate, had to blot out the world and find Phantom. The Traveler had been there a second ago. She had felt it and Phantom communicating. Surely she could reach it, too. She was one of its Guardians. She focused on that impression, both of Phantom and the Traveler watching.

Her Light opened her awareness. Part of her was sitting on the bare earth, hugging her knees. The other part stepped into a meadow of black flowers.

A woman was there - a fellow Titan in white and gold armor. But it was cracked in the same patterns as the Traveler's shell. She leaned on her sword and watched something.

Charon looked. A ghost was caught in the black flowers. She could not have said how she knew he was a ghost, because in this place, he was pure Light, and no shape she had ever seen. But in a glance, she knew he was a ghost. She had given him the name Phantom, and it fit his true shape.

Three flowers had pierced him like spears. They held him immobile, their greedy roots sucking away his essence, their black petals ruffled by the breeze.

Charon ran to him. "Phantom! I'm here, little light. How do you have my wounds?"

"I took them for you," he said. His voice was slow and weak with weariness. "You were going to die."

She tugged at the flowers, but as before, they were hard as wire. Phantom made a wordless sound of pain. "Don't."

Helpless fury rose within her, fueled by sick fear. She whirled to face the Traveler Titan who watched and did nothing. "Help him!"

"He took your Darkness on himself," said the avatar. "My dear ghosts, always attempting the impossible."

"Will he die?"

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps?" Charon repeated. "Look at him! It's killing him!"

The avatar met her eyes. Charon caught her breath. She felt that she was standing on the edge of an impossible gulf, staring into depths she hadn't known existed. It wasn't the Void - it was too full of life for that. The Traveler could erase her from existence in a second, if it wished. Her life was tied to its life.

"You could save him," the Traveler said, "if you hadn't caged him."

Guilt pierced Charon like a blade. How did it know? But of course it knew. It was the Traveler, sustainer of her Light.

She turned to Phantom, who looked up at her, his eye shining from the midst of his Light. Its movement was agonizingly slow. "What's the Traveler talking about? I'm not in the cage anymore."

She knelt beside him, touching his Light. That wall in her heart felt miles high and thick as a mountain. She cowered on the far side of it, afraid of any more hurt. She could almost look Phantom in the eye and not care that he was dying.

Almost.

He reached out to her and struck the wall. It stood between them like an invisible force field. "Oh." He flinched, drawing back. "You ... you shut me out?"

"Phantom, I ..." She tried to explain, tried to mitigate the hurt in his expression. But the words wouldn't come. The wall held them in.

"Charon ... " He struggled against the flowers. The words came slowly. "I tried to heal your spark when we bonded. But I can't heal your heart. I've tried ... Charon, I've tried. I've made you laugh. I've been there when you were sad. I've tried to be your strong ghost. But I guess ..." He looked at the flowers binding him and laughed weakly. "I guess, in the end, I can only die for you. All I have left is my life."

Charon reached for him and hit the wall of her own building. Every stone of it had been laid by her hands.

"It's from when I lost Simon," she blurted. "It broke me. I lost my confidence. My strength. I miss him, Phantom. I still miss him. I don't talk about him in front of you, because I know it hurts you. But I had to shut down my grief when you came along, and ... now it's a wall."

She was crying, tears dripping onto the red earth. And she was crying in the vision, looking down at her injured, dying ghost.

He was crying, too, tears of Light that he couldn't afford to lose. "I'm sorry, Charon. I've been an insensitive jerk. I knew you were still grieving. I felt it when we bonded. And I managed to ignore it like the selfish jerk I am. I helped build the wall. It's not just you. Please forgive me before I go."

Charon tossed a fearful glance at the Traveler. Now she knew why the avatar was waiting, leaning on a sword. It was going to take Phantom.

She leaped to her feet, facing the Traveler. "You can't."

The avatar's face might have been carved out of marble for all the expression it showed. "If I don't, the Darkness will consume him."

Charon drew her own sword, which she didn't know she had until that moment. "I'll kill you."

The Traveler gazed steadily at her. "I am not the enemy. Your ghost asked for your forgiveness. Will you grant it to him?"

Charon turned back to Phantom. She gripped the sword as she stood over him. "I forgive you, Phantom. And I love you." She gazed at the blade, running with Light and razor sharp. "And I ... I can't let you die this way. Do you trust me, little light?"

He eyed the sword, slow and sad. His voice was despairing. "Are you going to kill me?"

"I'm going to kill the flowers."

He smiled - and in his essence, it really was a smile. "I trust you, Guardian."

Charon swung the sword. The flowers shuddered to their roots. She hacked at them, tearing off petals, cutting through the stems that were braided and woven like steel cables. Phantom shuddered, each blow rocking him. First one flower died, then the second, then the third. They withered away into dust.

Phantom leaped into the air, shimmering with fresh light and regaining his ghost shape. He again tried to fly to Charon, and bounced off the invisible wall. He laughed and wept at the same time. "The wall's still there."

"I know." Charon stared at him desperately.

He gazed at her. "We'll both live, but forever cut off from one another. We'll look fine on the outside. But inside, we're still dying. Years of dying together." He made a shuddering, gasping sound, his spark curling in on itself. "Charon ... if you want me to leave ..." The words tore out of him in an anguished cry. "Then I will. I'll go away. Give you space. And you can ... can grieve. The way I've kept you from doing. You can heal without me trampling all over your emotions. But I'll still love you. I'll be alone, but I'll never forget. I'll roam the wilds again. Waiting. For years, if it takes years. And maybe, one day, you'll call me back to you. And I'll come."

This picture slashed Charon with unbearable pain. She pressed a hand to her face. "Don't make me go through it again. I can't lose another ghost, Phantom. If you leave - Light, if you leave, the grief will kill me. Simon died in an accident, but this would be me driving you away. I couldn't live with myself, Phan. Please stay - please give me another chance-" She tried to touch him, but the wall was still there. She traced it with her fingertips and found that it began in her heart, spreading out from there.

"I won't go unless you ask me," Phantom said unsteadily. "But - but I love you enough - to give you up."

"Please don't," she begged. "I need you to help me heal."

She slowly turned the sword, aiming its metaphysical blade at her heart. "I need to feel this pain I'm been hiding from. Losing Simon. Being severed. It's the only thing that will break the wall."

Phantom gasped. "Charon, don't, I'm not worth that-"

Charon fell on her sword.

It pierced the wall in her heart with pure pain. Inside the vision, she screamed. So did Phantom. Outside the vision, she still sat, hugging her knees and sobbing. The wall had been breached. Memories of Simon flashed through her mind - her snarky companion who she still missed ever so much. All the times he'd healed or resurrected her, all the times she'd tried and failed some battle move, all the little moments together, the in-jokes, the long years together.

Phantom saw her memories. He went quiet and still, shamed. He appeared beside her as the vision faded, emerging from that other place. His black shell was hideously scratched in root-like patterns, but he was alive. He floated beside her, his eye downcast. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I keep trying to help you, and all I do is make things worse. Now you're hurting again, all because of me. I should just ... leave." He turned, as if preparing to fly away.

She caught him out of the air and hugged him. "Oh Phantom, my little idiot. You stay right here." She pressed her cheek against his shell. "I'm not going to pretend that Simon didn't exist anymore. You'll have to get used to hearing about him, because that's the only way this wall will come down. Don't you dare go anywhere. I need you too badly."

He burrowed against her tunic and made a sound like a sigh. She held him for a while, stroking his shell, still feeling that sword of pain in her heart. "You got rid of the infections," she whispered. "It doesn't even hurt anymore."

"It hurts me," he whispered. "I still feel them. But ... I think they'll heal over time. As long as you still want me."

"Of course I still want you." She cradled and stroked him for a long time.

Somewhere, she knew, the Traveler's avatar was still watching.

* * *

After a long while, Charon said, "I guess we're stranded here."

Phantom looked up at her. "I guess we are. But you still have your rifle. And your Light. And me. We'll get by." He floated out of her hands and faced the wrecked ship. "But we do have a Shadow to take care of."

Neither of them spoke about walls or grief anymore. Charon had to think about something else or lose herself in the pain. And Phantom was weary, weary beyond expression, ashamed of himself, hurting for his Guardian. Dealing with the Shadow seemed small and manageable compared to the wall that still lay between them.

Charon got up. Drawing her rifle, she picked her way through the ship's scattered wreckage, looking for the Shadow.

The Shadow lay alongside the cockpit, his hand cannon still gripped tightly. One of the cockpit's metal struts had impaled him, passing through his body and a foot into the ground. He couldn't have gotten up if he tried.

He'd pulled off his helmet, and Charon saw his face for the first time. He had dark skin and jet black hair. His eyes gleamed with pain. The earth beneath him was soaked with blood. His boots were encrusted with Hive chitin - he was the Shadow she had seen in Old Chicago.

"You're still alive?" she said, incredulous.

"Yes," he wheezed. "You're feeding me life."

The black flowers. Charon bared her teeth. "Not anymore. I purified those wounds."

The Shadow's smile vanished into a snarl. He struggled to lift his hand cannon, but it dropped back to the ground. "I'll kill you," he gasped. "Kill you and take your Light."

Charon raised her rifle, but didn't fire. "You're dying. Don't you think you should be trying return to the Light?"

He laughed a little. Blood ran down his chin. "Death is power. The Light is weak. Lets the weak survive ... who should die. Being must be undone for true existence to begin."

He was spouting Hive philosophy. Charon glanced at Phantom and thought, "What do you think?"

Phantom didn't answer. Instead, he turned and gazed over her shoulder. After a moment, he said, "Look who didn't want to go to the Last City."

Mick flew toward them in his brown shell. He had abandoned the Fallen skiff, and now flew alone once more, back to Charon. He scanned the nearest wreckage, then caught sight of the Shadow.

The Shadow saw him. His eyes narrowed. The ghost stared at him.

Charon's heart caught. Could this foul man be Mick's Guardian? By the Traveler, let it not be true. This Shadow would kill the ghost out of hand.

"Is ..." She could barely force herself to ask the question. "Is he your Guardian?"

"Not anymore," Mick replied.

It took a moment to process this strange statement. Then realization hit Charon like a crashing jumpship.

"Hello, Raul," said Mick. "It's been a long time."

"Mick," the Shadow spat. "I told you never to come back. And don't call me that. Raul is dead."

Mick studied him from a safe distance. "What a strange fate brings us together again, one last time. I've been looking for another Guardian. But I guess it was always your spark I was tracking."

Raul glared and started to speak, but coughed instead, his body convulsing painfully around the spike in his middle.

"I could save you," Mick said softly. "It's not too late."

"I don't want your Light," Raul snarled. "Ghosts don't have enough, anyway. I want Guardians. I want her." Again, he struggled to raise his hand cannon at Charon. But it fell from his shaking fingers and clattered onto the ground, just out of reach. He stared after it, the breath rasping in his throat.

"Raul," Mick said again. "It's not too late. The Darkness lies. You can always return to the Light, no matter how far you've gone."

"I don't want it," Raul whispered. "I don't ... need it. I don't ... need your ... pity." He shuddered one last time. His head slumped to the ground, his eyes staring at nothing.

Charon stood there a long time, watching the dead man. Mick and Phantom floated beside her.

"Will you raise him?" she asked Mick.

"No," said the ghost. His voice was heavy with regret. "Our bond was so thin, I doubt I could have even healed him." He turned to Phantom. "The Darkness will try to cut you off from your Guardian. It divides and isolates. In isolation, it consumes. In the end, there is only death." He gazed at the sad wreck of his Guardian. "He was a good man, once." Then he turned and flew off, playing his scan beam over the rocks, as if giving himself something to do. Behind him, the Shadow lay dead beside a stolen jumpship.

* * *

Charon salvaged what she could from her ship. Most of her gear and rations were still in the lockers, but the Shadow had taken all her ammunition and the best food.

She left Raul beside the ship. But she took his corrupted hand cannon and buried it five feet deep.

After that, she put several miles between herself and the ship wreck. The Fallen would return to investigate eventually, and she didn't want to be anywhere near.

She didn't expect Mick to accompany her. But that evening, as she built a tiny campfire, she looked up to see the brown ghost floating nearby, watching.

"Can we play guessing games?" he asked.

She looked at Phantom. He emoted a smile.

"Of course we can," she said.

* * *

That night, Charon lay in her recovered sleeping bag under the stars. Phantom lay in the crook of her arm, asleep as soon as he landed.

The wall she had built in her heart was nothing compared to what Raul had built against his own ghost - miles of spiked fences and barbed wire. But in a way, they were the same. By cutting herself off from Phantom, she had cut herself off from the Light, itself. She had been walking a thin line without knowing it - the line where Guardians began a slow descent into Darkness.

"I'm sorry, my Phantom," she thought to him, even though he was asleep. "I promise I'll work through this. With you. And things will get better."

His eye blinked on, then off again. "Love you," he murmured sleepily in her head.

She leaned down and kissed his shell. "Love you, too."

She dozed off feeling comforted and freer than she had in a long time.

* * *

One day, after being alone for six weeks, Charon looked up from the Australian bush and saw a Guardian jumpship flying overhead.

"That ship is hailing us," Phantom said. "It's ... wow, it sounds like Peach."

"Ambrose?" Charon said in disbelief. "Answer them."

The ship circled and set down a short distance away. Charon strode toward it, flanked by Phantom and Mick. "Looks like we're headed home, boys."

"I'm ready to leave," Mick said. "I want to look elsewhere for a Guardian. Maybe Venus."

"Good," Charon said.

The ship's door opened and Ambrose stepped out, grinning. The Awoken wore fancy Hunter gear, good leather armor, and a cloak that had seen better days and several owners.

"What are you doing here?" Charon asked, shaking his hand.

"Giving you a lift, of course," Ambrose said. "The Vanguard made a fuss about training me as a Guardian or some such. Wouldn't let me return for you until I'd graduated. My apologies for the long wait." He bowed and stepped back, indicating the ship's door. "Might I invite you aboard my humble jumpship, m'lady?"

"I'd be delighted," Charon said, climbing aboard.

As she strapped herself into the copilot's seat, she asked, "How did you get a ship so soon, if you just graduated?"

Ambrose settled into the pilot seat. "Several other Guardians expressed concern over your inadvertent marooning. Beside Lowanna, who was furious, by the way, there was Nathan, Ariana, Grant-4, and Muriel, along with their ghosts. They chipped in to help me buy a ship and outfit it to locate you."

Charon's eyes blurred with tears. Her baby Guardians had cared about her. She'd thought they'd go off on their own and never give her another thought. After living alone for a month and a half, resigned to calling Australia home, the idea of being remembered and cared for overcame her.

Ambrose glanced at her, saw her tears, and pretended not to see. "Your fireteam was anxious, too. A fellow named Ashton threatened to knock holes in my head if I came back without you."

Charon laughed a little and wiped her eyes. "When we get home, I'm taking every last one of you out to dinner."

"Excellent," Ambrose said. He cleared his throat. "And maybe ... I might reciprocate. Later."

Phantom nudged Charon and giggled in her head.

She smiled at Ambrose. "That sounds lovely."

* * *

The end


End file.
